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Japanese-Americans:
Generations in Nevada

Interviewees: Fred Aoyama, Mary Date, Buddy Fujii, Henry Hattori,
Roy Nishiguchi, George Oshima, and Ida Fukui Weiss
Interviewed: 1992
Published: 2000
Interviewer: Noriko Kunitomi
UNOHP Catalog #186

Description

Seven chroniclers share their recollections as children of Japanese immigrants to the United States. They explore why
their parents left Japan, their experiences during World War II, what it was like growing up as Japanese-Americans
in Nevada, the cultural differences between their parents’ generation and their own. The interviews were done by
Noriko Kunitomi, an anthropology student from Japan at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1992. Although her
interviews are neither deep nor broad, they are important; without them we would have no oral history record of
the experiences of Japanese-Americans in Nevada.

Japanese-Americans
Generations in Nevada

Oral History Interviews with Fred Aoyama,
Mary Date, Buddy Fujii, Henry Hattori,

Roy Nishiguchi, George Oshima and Ida Fukui Weiss

An Oral History Conducted by Noriko Kunitomi
Edited by Kathleen M. Coles and Susan Imswiler

University of Nevada Oral History Program

University of Nevada Oral History Program
Mail Stop 0324
Reno, Nevada 89557
unohp @unr. edu
http: / / www. unr. edu/ oralhistory

Publication Staff:

Director: R. T. King
Assistant Director: Mary Larson
Production Manager: Kathleen M. Coles
Text Designer: Linda Sommer
Production Assistants: Amy Fiack, Verne W. Foster

University of Nevada Oral History Program Use Policy

All UNOHP interviews are copyrighted materials. They may be downloaded and/or
printed for personal reference and educational use, but not republished or sold. Under
“fair use” standards, excerpts of up to 1000 words may be quoted for publication without
UNOHP permission as long as the use is non-commercial and materials are properly
cited. The citation should include the title of the work, the name of the person or
people interviewed, the date of publication or production, and the fact that the work
was published or produced by the University of Nevada Oral History Program (and
collaborating institutions, when applicable). Requests for permission to quote for other
publication, or to use any photos found within the transcripts, should be addressed
to the UNOHP, Mail Stop 0324, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, NV 89557-0324.
Original recordings of most UNOHP interviews are available for research purposes
upon request.

Contents

Preface to the Digital Edition ix

Original Preface xi

1. FredAoyama 1

2. Mary Date 19

3. Buddy Fujii 31

4. Henry Hattori 47

5. Roy Nishiguchi 61

6. George Oshima 83

7. Ida Fukui Weiss 93

Original Index: For Reference Only 103

Preface to the Digital Edition

Established in 1964, the University of
Nevada Oral History Program (UNOHP)
explores the remembered past through
rigorous oral history interviewing, creating a
record for present and future researchers. The
programs collection of primary source oral
histories is an important body of information
about significant events, people, places,
and activities in twentieth and twenty-first
century Nevada and the West.

The UNOHP wishes to make the
information in its oral histories accessible
to a broad range of patrons. To achieve
this goal, its transcripts must speak with
an intelligible voice. However, no type font
contains symbols for physical gestures and
vocal modulations which are integral parts
of verbal communication. When human
speech is represented in print, stripped of
these signals, the result can be a morass of
seemingly tangled syntax and incomplete
sentences—totally verbatim transcripts
sometimes verge on incoherence. Therefore,
this transcript has been lightly edited.

While taking great pains not to alter
meaning in any way, the editor may have
removed false starts, redundancies, and the
“uhs,” “ahs,” and other noises with which
speech is often liberally sprinkled; compressed
some passages which, in unaltered form,
misrepresent the chroniclers meaning; and
relocated some material to place information
in its intended context. Laughter is represented
with [laughter] at the end of a sentence in
which it occurs, and ellipses are used to
indicate that a statement has been interrupted
or is incomplete.. .or that there is a pause for
dramatic effect.

As with all of our oral histories, while
we can vouch for the authenticity of the
interviews in the UNOHP collection, we
advise readers to keep in mind that these are
remembered pasts, and we do not claim that
the recollections are entirely free of error.
We can state, however, that the transcripts
accurately reflect the oral history recordings
on which they were based. Accordingly, each
transcript should be approached with the

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

same prudence that the intelligent reader
exercises when consulting government
records, newspaper accounts, diaries, and
other sources of historical information.
All statements made here constitute the
remembrance or opinions of the individuals
who were interviewed, and not the opinions
of the UNOHP.

In order to standardize the design of all
UNOHP transcripts for the online database,
most have been reformatted, a process that
was completed in 2012. This document may
therefore differ in appearance and pagination
from earlier printed versions. Rather than
compile entirely new indexes for each volume,
the UNOHP has made each transcript fully
searchable electronically. If a previous version
of this volume existed, its original index has
been appended to this document for reference
only. A link to the entire catalog can be found
online at http://oralhistory.unr.edu/.

For more information on the UNOHP
or any of its publications, please contact the
University of Nevada Oral History Program at
Mail Stop 0324, University of Nevada, Reno,
NV, 89557-0324 or by calling 775/784-6932.

Alicia Barber
Director, UNOHP
July 2012

Original Preface

Since 1965 the University of Nevada
Oral History Program has been collecting an
eyewitness account of Nevada’s remembered
past. Following the precedent established by
Allan Nevins at Columbia University in 1948
(and perpetuated since by academic programs
such as ours throughout the English-speaking
world) these manuscripts are called oral
histories. Some confusion surrounds the
meaning of the term. To the extent that these
“oral” histories can be read, they are not oral,
and while they are useful historical sources,
they are not themselves history. Still, custom
is a powerful force; historical and cultural
records that originate in tape-recorded
interviews are almost uniformly labeled “oral
histories,” and our program follows that usage.

Oral histories conducted by UNOHP
are meant as firsthand accounts that serve
the function of primary source documents,
as valuable in the process of historiography
as the written records with which historians
customarily work. However, while the
properly conducted oral history is a reliable
source, verifying the accuracy of all of the

statements made in the course of an interview
would require more time and money than the
UNOHP s operating budget permits.

As with all such efforts, while we can vouch
that this work is an authentic expression of the
chroniclers’ remembered past, the UNOHP
does not claim that the work is free of error. It
should be approached with the same caution
that the prudent reader exercises when
consulting government records, newspaper
accounts, diaries, and other sources of
historical information.

Each finished manuscript is the product
of a collaboration—its structure influenced
by the directed questioning of an informed,
well-prepared interviewer, and its articulation
refined through editing. In producing a
manuscript, it is the practice of the UNOHP
to employ the language of the chronicler, but
to edit for clarity and readability. By shifting
text when necessary, by polishing syntax, and
by deleting or subsuming the questions of
the interviewer, a first-person narrative with
chronological and topical order is created.
While there is no standard chronicler profile

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

xii

nor rigid approach to interviewing, each oral
history plumbs human memory to gain a
better understanding of the past.

Noriko Kunitomi was a University of
Nevada student from Japan, who was working
on a degree in anthropology in 1992 and
has since returned to Japan. Ms. Kunitomi
did an independent study exercise with
Oral History Director, Tom King, to collect
information on the experiences of Japanese-
Americans whose parents had immigrated to
the United States before World War II. Prior
to her work, we had nothing from Japanese-
Americans in our collection, even though
we had made several attempts. Even Noriko
Kunitomi experienced difficulty in getting
her chroniclers to participate. Although her
interviews are neither deep nor broad, they
are important; without them we would have
no oral history record of the experiences of
Japanese-Americans in Nevada.

The tape recordings from which this
manuscript is derived are in the archives of the
University of Nevada Oral History Program
where they can be heard by appointment.

UNOHP
October 2000

Fred Aoyama

Noriko Kunitomi: Today is October 14, 1992.
I’m interviewing Mr. Fred Aoyama today at
his house in Reno, Nevada. The interview will
be about the ancestors in his family, decision¬
making, and life stories related to his family
and himself. Does the University of Nevada
Oral History Program have your permission
to make available to the public the tapes and
transcripts from this interview?

Fred Aoyama: Yes.

Could you tell me where your family, your
father and your mother, come from in Japan?

My father came from Hiroshima, Canton;
I don’t know what city or town.

That’s fine.

My mother came from Kyoto, but, see, we
heard these stories when we were real small,
and that’s about all I can remember.

But do you know, did they get married in Japan?

Oh, yes.

And do you know when they came to the United
States?

Well, probably, ten or fifteen years before
I was born, [laughter]

Could you tell me when you were born?

June 6, 1910. So it was close to then; I am
just guessing; I don’t know when they came,
because I never asked them.

Have you heard about reasons why your
parents came to the United States?

Well, because in those days, the United
States was considered the wealthiest country
to come and work in. You can make money
and go back to Japan after you have made
your fortune. Of course, I think many of those
people with those good intentions came here,
but couldn’t go back, so they remained here.
Very few made enough to go back to their

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

home towns to help their relatives over there,
I’m sure.

So your parents came here to be farmers, or
what kind of business did they pursue?

Well, living in San Francisco, they didn’t
look for farming, because they came without
capital to buy a farm. Besides, I don’t think
they could buy land. See they had the alien
land law, I think, where, unless you are a
citizen, you can’t buy ground. So some of
those farmers just rented the grounds, so they
made less money if they did that.

How did your parents make a living?

Well, they worked. My mother had
children to raise, so she stayed home, and my
father worked at various jobs. I really don’t
know what he did, but I am sure they were
mediocre jobs, because he had no skills, and he
came from an average, middle class family, but
he heard about the wealth in this country, so
he wanted to make money. However, they had
no idea what you have to do in this country to
make money. So I am sure that he didn’t have
the kind of work that would earn big wages.
He supported us, but just enough to live.

So you did not have to help your parents?

Well, when I was twelve years old I went
to work, because they had no child labor laws.
I went to Chinatown, and they paid me some
small wage. I’ve even forgotten how much I
made, but I was one of the youngest people to
work in Chinatown. I learned to sell Oriental
art goods.

So did you learn how to speak Chinese?

No. This was a Japanese store.

Oh, in Chinatown?

Yes. The reason for that was, the Chinatown
in San Francisco was the largest in the whole
world, they tell me. All the tourists go to San
Francisco Chinatown to buy Oriental goods.
So the Japanese people, whenever there was
a vacancy in Chinatown, rented that building
and started their business. There were at
least five or six Japanese stores in the whole
Chinatown. But I know that, at one time,
Japanese and Chinese hated each other.

When you were living in California, growing
up in San Francisco and Los Angeles, did you
feel any discrimination or segregation?

Not that much, because, see, we didn’t
know what the word discrimination or
prejudice meant when we were kids going
to grammar school. Our parents didn’t
understand, because they didn’t understand
English in the first place. That’s another reason
they couldn’t get a good job, because if they
could speak English they could find out
why they couldn’t get a better job. So I think
our being ignorant was a blessing, because
we never saw this discrimination going on
around us. See, California people disliked
the Japanese, the Chinese, the Filipinos,
any Orientals. Then they always hated the
newcomers the worst, and the Japanese were
the last to come to this country among the
Orientals, as far as I knew.

You told me in previous questions that when
you looked for a job in Los Angeles you couldn’t
get one from a Caucasians company?

Well, no. I didn’t. When I went to Los
Angeles, my older brother was there to talk to
his friends about a job for me, and so I didn’t
have to go looking for a job, but the reason I

Fred Aoyama

wanted to go was that I knew that the pay scale
was better in Los Angeles than it was in San
Francisco. That’s the reason I went. I worked
various jobs in San Francisco, but could never
learn enough about business to know exactly
what brought better pay. So I was fortunate to
be able to find a job through my brother and
go into the bingo business.

When you became more familiar with English
later on, did you notice prejudice in the city,
and also in Nevada when you came over to
Nevada?

No, that’s strange. Nevada was very wide
open. Instead of people saying, “Hello, how
are you?”, like they do other places, they say,
“Let’s go have a drink.” [laughter] That was
the greeting when I first came here, and I
was amazed that people could even afford to
buy drinks like they did in Nevada, because
in California we couldn’t afford a highball at
fifty cents a drink in those days. Well, you see,
I was earning enough money, which I sent to
my family in San Francisco and kept a small
portion for myself, so therefore, I didn’t have
any extra spending money; just enough to live,
because what I spent was the bulk of what I
made, but not enough for the family support.
So even my younger brother had to work to
subsidize the family. How we got along in
those days, I really don’t understand, because
today they make in one hour what I used to
make in one day.

It sounds tough. Were you the only person
among your family who lived in Nevada?

Oh, yes, because, you see, the Japanese felt
safety and were more comfortable living with
other Japanese. They didn’t have to learn the
English language; they could speak, purchase
groceries, clothes; they had everything in the

Japanese section. I think that was a bad thing,
because had they learned to speak English,
things would have been much better. Some
learned English, but they were very few, the
minority.

Your English is great right now, and I wonder
if you spoke English when you were young?

Oh, yes. See, our whole family spoke
English to help the children in our family do
their studying, because they spoke English in
schools. Their friends outside spoke English,
and that’s the only way you communicated
with people. We understood the Japanese
that our parents used. When they told us
what to do, we obeyed, but we never spoke
back to them in Japanese. My mother sent us
to Japanese school for a short while, but gave
that up, because we used to go off and play
hookey. We never went to Japanese school,
because we had to finish the American school
at three o’clock and then turn around—at
three thirty, the Japanese school starts. I think,
maybe, they had it for an hour or so. I tried
it, but then all my friends weren’t around any
more; they went home for dinner. So, instead
of going to Japanese school.... My mother
wanted to pay them, but that was her decision,
not mine. So we didn’t go to school, and she
found out about it, and so she thought it was
useless, so she didn’t send us anymore. It was
really fairly close to school there, too.

So, your parents could understand you children
speaking English ?

Well, I guess they could tell by the way we
said something or pointed to something. We
had a very difficult time when the teacher gave
us homework, because we would bring the
problems home, because these are things that
you are supposed to work out at home, and

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

your parents are supposed to help you a little
bit. The only way I got my homework done
was to go to my friend’s house and discuss it
with my friend and put the answers down,
because my parents couldn’t understand the
questions. You know, that’s the way it was. So
we had very poor communications between
the parents and the children, and yet, I am
surprised that when you look at the Japanese
families, they are very loyal to their families.
They think about their parents, their brothers
and sisters, and family, so what causes this
is something that I only am guessing at
why. Maybe we were taught, and we learned
subconsciously, I don’t know.

Could you describe what kind of houses or
rooms you lived in?

In San Francisco only wealthy people
rented houses. They have flats; usually the
houses in the Japanese section have three
floors of flats, and you have enough bedrooms
and a living room and kitchen on that floor.
You know, it’s a long building. You go into
the living room to the bedrooms and the
hallways; maybe a bedroom on the other side
of the house. I think that was about a three
bedroom. We didn’t rent a flat. That was a
house and, oh, I know the reason for that.
That was my grandmother and grandfather’s
house. They came before us. I think my
father came, because they asked for him to
come. They had this house rented, but since
he couldn’t get a good job enough to rent a
house, we lived with them, and whatever we
earned, they paid part of the rent for the house
to make it easier for the grandparents to pay
the rent. Yes, because I remember now, this
was a first floor. We called it the basement,
which all San Francisco houses had, a garage
and storage area. Second floor was living
and bathroom. Our place was a basement,

but we couldn’t afford a car, so we never had
a car. There was a garage in the back which
we rented out. The Caucasian man next door
used to rent the garage. There was a laundry
next door that had trucks, and they put them
in the garages, so they subsidized the rent by
renting those three garages we had. They used
to drive alongside of the house. I remember
those things. That’s many years ago.

So it was a house. Did you share rooms?

With the brothers. Well, there were
enough rooms. This is very interesting to me,
because in the 1960 Olympics, you see, the
mayor of Reno was my friend, and he said to
me, “You work too hard, so let’s take a day off,
and I’ll take you to the Olympics in Squaw
Valley up here.” It was held up at Lake Tahoe,
and we went there and watched the opening
ceremonies. Vice President Nixon was there
to open the games, and it was snowing, oh,
just madly snowing.

I said, “I don’t want to go.”

The most amazing thing happened. We
turned off the road and went into Squaw
Valley. Oh, the mayor’s name was Bud Baker,
by the way. And so, since he’s the mayor of
Reno, they can’t say, “You can’t park here; you
can’t park there.”

So he just went right up in there and
parked, and we got a good parking space,
so we could sit in the car and listen, because
the snow was coming down cats and dogs.
But prior to that, we looked towards Squaw
Valley, and I said, “There’s a hole in the sky,
and it looks like there’s sunshine over there.
Do you think that’s right over Squaw Valley.”

He said, “Well, when we get there, we’ll
see, won’t we?” Well, sure enough, when we
parked there was no snow for Vice President
Nixon, who was out trying to get started for
a speech. It didn’t snow the whole time he

Fred Aoyama

talked and made introductions and such as
that and congratulated these people. You
know how they do. And when he finished, the
sky closed up, and the snow came down again,
[laughter] I couldn’t figure what happened.

That’s interesting.

Yes. I looked in the newspapers for a
comment on that, but they never seemed to
have noticed that that’s what happened. I don’t
know why. I guess maybe they didn’t have
any reporters up there, because they figured
nothing was going to happen today, because
it’s snowing, and they might have been in the
main part of the place to record his speech if
he had had to go inside, but he spoke outside
in the open air in a real round spot like this.
Nixon was here, and it didn’t snow on us.

That is amazing.

Well, then we started walking around after
that, and we knew somebody named Lardner
from Los Angeles. A very wealthy produce
merchant had rented a house for them, a big
house in the Olympic Village, they called it.
It was just outside the gaming area, and they
said that that’s a good place to go visit, if you
want to meet some of the Japanese athletes
from Japan. So Bud said, “Let’s go and meet
them.” We went over there, and that place had
whiskey like you couldn’t believe. He stocked
the place with food and liquor like a regular
hotel bar.

We got acquainted with Mr. Sakato of the
Sakato Pearl Company from Tokyo, and he
said he was happy to meet some people from
Reno, so that he could come in. I think he
paid quite a bit of the expenses there to bring
those athletes, the skiers and the skaters and
whatever, because I still have a souvenir that
he gave me. [I think I will give you one of

those, because it’s a silver pair of skis with two
pearls on it, and for a souvenir of your visit
I think I’ll make you a present of that. How’s
that?] We met a few times, and he said to me
after he came into town, “Oh”, he said, “The
American food is excellent, but the Japanese
athletes miss their Japanese food, and they
can’t even make tea, because they don’t know
how to ask the people, and I don’t either.”

So I said, “Well, I have an electric plug-in
hot water maker, so would you like to take that
with you? And if you have the tea, our tea isn’t
as good as what you have, so maybe you can
make tea for yourself?’ He thought that was like
a treasure, because it was a cheap little thing,
but it made this much hot water, [laughter]

He never forgot me for that. I think that’s
what led him to—he brought some athletes
to town and visited our house, and he said, “I
want to invite you to the 1964 Olympic Games
in Japan.” He said, “You’ll be my guest.”

So I looked at him, and I thanked him,
but I thought to myself, how can I go to Japan
and say, “Here I am, Mr. Sakato”? [laughter]
I could barely afford the fare, and so I didn’t
go. I’m sorry I didn’t, because now I think
he’s passed away and gone, but I just couldn’t
bring myself to accept his hospitality.

I will tell you another story about a friend
of mine who I sent over years and years later.
He got such a royal treatment that he said,
“You should have gone.” [laughter] OK, you
want to ask some questions? That was an
interruption to your question.

Yes. You told me that your grandparents were in
the United States before your family came over.

Right, but I don’t know when they came.
Did they live with you in the house?

Oh, yes.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Do you remember how different they lived from
the way your family lived?

Pretty much the same, because, see, I
think that Japanese foods as a whole were
much more reasonable than American foods,
and, of course, being born in America, we
liked certain American foods. So they would
serve breakfast, like coffee and bacon and
eggs, or something like that, mush, milk; but
usually for lunch we took a sandwich, and
dinner we ate Japanese food. That’s about the
way they lived.

What kind of clothing did they wear?

Oh, they wore American style clothing,
because you can’t have long sleeves or puffy
sleeves to work. He was a carpenter, by the
way. He had a sign on the front, and he used to
build things for people and sharpen saws. He
was very good at that—saws and the Japanese
planes. They are made out of wood, and you
pull them toward you. The American planes
you push away. The saws were pulled back,
too, but finally, I noticed that some of the true
craftsmen of this country are using the pull
saws of Japan. They say it cuts finer edges than
the American fine tooth saws. I guess it does,
because where my son lives in Alameda he
took me to a place that sells all sorts of saws
and tools made in Japan. This is owned by a
Caucasian man, but he sells them because
there is much demand for them. See, even the
Japanese in this country, who are born here,
don’t even think about those kinds of tools,
because they’re not used to it. They are used
to the American way: the push saw, the push
plane, and even the electric saw; but this man
sold very fine tools there, and he says there’s
a call for them. It’s true, and he had a whole
stock of tools, and he says he has a steady
clientele of people who buy those tools. I guess

the market is limited to these hobbyists and
neo-craftsmen who can do fine work. They
are expensive, too.

What about grandmother? Did she do some
work?

Well, I think she did some sewing in the
house, or something. Anyway, they didn’t
live very long after we moved in with them,
because they were in their early eighties, I
think, or late seventies, and they passed away.
So we didn’t know them for any long period
of time, and we didn’t get acquainted, but we
knew who they were.

Did you have more cousins here?

Strangely, no. Aoyama is not a common
name, but there are some. In fact, I saw one
in the Reno tax rolls here a few years back,
but it’s gone. They came here for a short while
and left. But I see it in the Japanese-American
Citizen League paper, the Pacific Citizen. You
see those?

No, I haven’t seen those papers.

Well, in there I’ve seen Aoyama, but they
are not related to us, because I’ve talked to
one or two of them, and they have some who
live in Los Angeles, but never lived in San
Francisco, or they may have come from Japan
later, I don’t know, but there are not very many
Aoyamas.

Could you tell me why and how you ended up
living here in Reno?

Well, as I said, Earl Warren, the Attorney
General of California, was always closing up
places in California when he discovered that
gambling was going on, which I am sure all

Fred Aoyama

police departments knew about beforehand,
and I’m sure that Warren did, too, because
he was not stupid, but it was so irregular. The
longest period I remember working without
interruption was a year, because after one year
they want another contribution. So wed be
out of work for a month, at least, and then go
back to work. So the general manager of that
corporation, or whatever it was that hired us,
decided he wanted his own business, too, and
away from California, where gambling was a
steadier, routine business. So he asked me if
I would like to go to Kansas City, Missouri,
with him, and since all of us were out of work,
anyway, because they closed up the places, we
said, “Sure,” and we took two other friends of
ours and drove all the way from Ocean Park
to Kansas City, Missouri.

Two of us rented an apartment in one
apartment building, and the others went to
another apartment. We opened the place,
because Mr. Yamagashi was already there.
Oh, air conditioning was a thing that they
needed badly, and they hadn’t thought about
refrigerated air conditioning at that time,
because this is 1933. So they recommended
that he build a big enclosure. I’d say it was
about this big square, and they had an
opening to the outside where they could drop
ice blocks. There were three-hundred-pound
blocks, you know, big ones. They filled it with
ice and blew the fan over it into the room, and
that would cool it. [laughs] Well, it wasn’t like
refrigerated air conditioning, but it served the
purpose, and it was quite comfortable inside
there. They had to buy enough ice so that it
would last until the evening session. We got
so we knew how much to order for the next
day.

Well, after about three weeks to a month
of operation, we decided that business was
improving, and there was a future there,
because the people liked us, and nobody came

to bother us. So Mr. Yamagashi said, “You
boys take a vacation and go to the Century of
Progress in Chicago, because you can’t help
the carpenters here; they’re all union, and they
don’t want you to pick up nails and stuff, so
you just go and enjoy yourselves in Chicago.”

So we had the first opportunity to go to
the Mississippi River. I could never believe
how big the Mississippi River was, because
you couldn’t see the other side, from one side
to the other. They said it was a mile across,
but I think it’s the curvature of the earth or
something that keeps you from seeing all the
way across to the other bank. Now, you could
see the buildings over there, but you couldn’t
really see the bank, because where we crossed
it was about a mile wide. We got to the city
of Chicago and wandered around quite a bit
looking the sights over, but we decided we had
better get a place to rest up and have a place
to sleep for the night, and we checked many
hotels and motels, but they were all full. You
go to a world fair like that, and you go to a
place where it’s jammed with tourists from
just all over the Midwest, because Chicago is
centrally located.

So one boy had a good idea. He said, “Let’s
try the YMCA.”

So we said we had better find it, and we
did, and we met the director, and he said, “I
don’t have any more rooms for you, but if you
are willing to sleep on cots, I’ll put them in
the hallway for you, and I won’t charge you
the regular rates. So you can sleep on the cot
for two dollars a night.”

We thought that was very reasonable, so
we made the agreement that we would stay
there for the duration. One of the amusing
things was the high price of food in the
Century of Progress. I read a story in the
paper written by some news reporter, and he
said he had lettuce, and when he opened the
sandwich up to see how much ham he got,

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

it was sliced so thin the wind blew it away,
[laughter] And they charged like a dollar and
a half for that kind of sandwich! In those days
bread and things were cheaper.

Oh, Sally Rand was very famous. She
was one of what they call stripteasers now;
she used a great, big, old fan, and she kind
of moved around and moved just in time to
keep the fan between the audience and her
body. So she charged a fat price, too, but we
couldn’t afford it. We asked the people what it
was like, and they said, “You’re smart not to go
in there, because you get charged five dollars
admission, and you don’t see anything.”
[laughter] They said, “She waves—and she
isn’t even a very good dancer.” [laughter] So
we were glad we didn’t go to that.

Then we saw the Japan Pavilion, because
we’d never been to a fair. Of course, we went
later, and we saw the San Francisco Fair and
the Japan Pavilion there, too. But we ran into
many girls from San Francisco, because they
got a job in that Pavilion, and they were serving
tea, so we spent a little bit of time drinking
their tea, but the powdered tea they served
didn’t make very good iced tea. I don’t think
they use that even in Japan, anymore. It was a
horrible looking thing. It’s a green color that is
very artificial looking, and it didn’t taste good
at all, [laughter] but the tea cakes were OK.

Anyway, so we looked around there and
spent probably three days there, and we left
for home, because we were out of money. We
thought we had some money. I had eighty
dollars, but it was totally gone—just enough
for gasoline to get back, because we all shared.
The four of us had gone up there.

When we got back we noticed this person
sitting there watching the game. So I went up
to speak to him and asked him to play, so that
we could teach him, and he said, “This is a free
country, and I’m going to sit here and watch,
if I please. So leave me alone!”

Well, much to our amazement, this man
was taking notes on the operation of the game
and counting the customers and how much
money we could possibly be making. Within
three or four weeks we found out the results,
because they came to the boss, Mr. Yamagashi,
and they gave him an ultimatum—to sell out
or face the consequences—which meant lead
or cement shoes installed and being dumped
somewhere where nobody knew where,
[laughter]

So he was intelligent enough to see
that. We went to many attorneys, police
departments, sheriffs departments. They
didn’t have an FBI. So we had nobody in
government to appeal to. These gangster
people did pretty much as they pleased. In
fact, they took over the bank account of
the money we had in the bank close to the
corner there. We had a checking account to
pay the bills of five thousand dollars, which
we went to claim, and the banker said, “Your
proprietor sold the business to these people
for the sum of one dollar, so the bank account
also belongs to them.” I looked at the man
and wondered how stupid he could be, but
I could see the fear in his eyes, because if he
didn’t do what they said, why, he would be in
the same position we were. So they took the
money, and we were out of a job.

Well, they wanted us to work for them,
but I couldn’t see working for people who
just took over the place by sheer force of
power, and we couldn’t leave our boss Mr.
Yamagashi in the lurch to make money for
these very same people who stole the place
from him. So we made an excuse that we
had a stomachache, and we couldn’t show up
for work that night. They said we were fired,
because we didn’t show up in time for work.
So we were very happy to hear this answer,
and we were glad to leave for home, which
we did. We charged it up to experience. It was

Fred Aoyama

sad, because Mr. Yamagashi—I don’t know
how much he spent to build the building and
enlarge it, and as soon as they enlarged it, the
gangsters took over.

He paid our way home. Mr. Yamagashi
was a very honorable man. He passed away
just maybe two years ago, but I’ve always
thought of him as one of the few intelligent,
loyal friends that we ever had.

I’ll continue on by saying that we took
odd jobs as we came back to California. We
naturally couldn’t earn the kind of money
that we were earning, and yet we couldn’t see
ourselves going back to another session in the
bingo games, because now it got to a point
where, even if a place opened up, you could
get as good a job in other places, because of
the inflation over a period of years. Roosevelt
was beginning to show signs of recovery of the
economy, and so when Mr. Yamagashi came
to San Francisco to talk to me about coming
to Reno, why, I said, “Sure! I’ll go to Reno,”
because I could trust the man. I came up
here to take the place of a man who had this
assistant manager’s job, who wanted to leave,
because he wanted to go back to Japan to
marry his wife who some people had arranged
for him to marry in Japan, and he was going to
retire in Japan, anyway. So he wasn’t coming
back, so I had no worry about losing the job
back to him.

One of the interesting things I can recall
back in Ocean Park was when I was working
there, I met a movie actor from Japan. His
name was Henry Okowa, who finally went
back to Japan well before World War II.
He was working at Paramount Studios, but
between jobs he was working in the bingo
game with us. That is how I got acquainted
with him. Very handsome man! I’ll show you
his picture. He is one of the few friends I had
in Japan. I must have relatives there, but I’ve
never been there, so I don’t know.

Anyway, I came to Reno in 1936 and have
lived here ever since. When I came, I didn’t
think I would be here this long, but totally,
I believe, I’ve been here fifty-six years. So
I know quite a bit about Reno. When you
live in a small town, it’s very easy to become
acquainted with politicians, to know the state
senators, congressmen and women. We have
one at the moment, but I understand we’re
going to have two pretty soon, because the
Las Vegas population boom has required that
Nevada get a second congressman. The mayor
of Reno, the council people, the mayor of
Sparks, I know them even today, even without
reason, because they are in the news quite a
bit, and we have the same types of politicians
that we’ve always had, feathering their own
nests, [laughter] We hope things will change
with the progress of a more intelligent general
public who will elect good people, intelligent
people, that can work for the community
honestly, instead of taking payoffs and making
money for themselves.

I worked for this Reno club as an assistant
manager, which is somewhat like a vice
president, a public relations person. We would
open the place at seven o’clock in the evening
and close somewhere between eleven and
twelve at night, and then it was my duty to
go to the various bars. At that time it was a
square block, one block on Virginia to Second
Street, both sides of the street. Left down
Second Street, there was the Grand Hotel and
Cafe, Leon and Eddie’s, and such. Go around
the corner to Center Street where bars were
on both sides of the street. Then the Golden
Hotel was there at the time. Today that place is
called Harrah’s Club, and the Palace Club was
also purchased by Harrah’s Club. There’s an
alley there called Douglas Alley, between the
railroad tracks and Second Street, that small
alley. They had bars on the railroad side of the
building, and then also from the railroad side

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

they had bars on that side. Reno was just full
of nothing but bars, [laughter] It amazes me
that all of them could make a living.

There were small gambling places; some
bars had their own blackjack games and a
few slot machines, but today things have
changed. The small casino owner without a
hotel is hurt badly, because he can’t control the
customers who have bad luck and lose. They
can’t just go to another table, another table,
and change. They just leave the place, because
there’s nothing else to do. Motels are hurting,
because they don’t have a casino right next
to them. The only time they get any business
is when the hotels are so full that they refer
customers to the various motels that cater to
that type of an agreement. It’s very different
today than what we had in those days.

But getting back to public relations work
with the club, I had a horrible time, because
in Los Angeles I could not afford to go to bars
and pay fifty cents a drink. Up here in Reno
the drinks were cheaper, and my boss gave
me a hundred dollars to spend in one night,
[laughter] He says, “You go spend this money
and make friends for our club.” So, try as I
might, it was impossible, because I never had
time to stop and figure why I couldn’t spend
this money, but one time much later, after I
kept wondering why I couldn’t spend that
hundred dollars a night, I decided it was the
price of the drinks. See, a drink was poured in
a small shot, a one ounce glass, which I don’t
think many people drink nowadays, but in
those days they did. You can order a shot of
whiskey for fifteen cents, two for twenty-five
cents, so I figured at two for twenty-five cents,
that’s eight drinks for a dollar, which means
that with a hundred dollars I’d have to buy
eight hundred drinks. I couldn’t possibly do
that, because this one block square, which was
four blocks, and maybe a few places across
the street, at the maximum it was about six

blocks of bars. I just couldn’t spend that much
money.

There was a place called the Dog House
which was a little off the beaten path on
Center Street, and they had a big round table
with seating for about twenty. As soon as I’d
walk in the door, they’d welcome me with
open arms, because they knew that I was
spending money. I would say money makes
friends, because before I’d even sit down,
every seat was taken, except the one they
left for me, because if I didn’t have a seat, if I
couldn’t sit, maybe I wouldn’t buy a drink, see.
So I’d say, “Buy the table a drink”, and there
goes.

Well, the girls there were pretty smart. See,
they had what they called B Girls; they are bar
girls, and they’d try to get you drunk and .. .
but they never tried to get me drunk, because
they knew if I got drunk, I wouldn’t be back,
[laughter] So they let me sip one drink, and
they could order two or three or whatever
they wanted. So they helped me spend, but I
couldn’t afford to spend the bulk of the money
there, either, because they could come and
play bingo in our place—maybe not as much
as I would spend there—so you have to gauge
that as a principle of business. You don’t spend
that much. Sometimes I’d buy one round of
drinks and leave, sometimes two rounds, and
very seldom more than two.

So I met a bartender after I left this place
on Center Street, and he said, “Young man,
you got troubles?”

I said, “What makes you say that?”

He says, “You come in here about three
o’clock every morning, and you don’t look
like you are in very good shape, and yet you
sit and buy the bar drinks, and I don’t have
very many customers, but you visit with me,
and then you go on your way.”

I said, “No, I don’t have any troubles, but
that’s part of my job, public relations. I’ve got

Fred Aoyama

to buy a drink. If I don’t drink with them, they
don’t drink.”

The bartender sympathized with me, and
he says, “I know you, what you are talking
about.” He says, “If a customer says, ‘Have a
drink,’ and I don’t pour myself a drink, and I
drink tea ... I know bars that tried that, and
the guys won’t come to this bar. You gotta
drink with them, because if they’re happy,
they want to make you feel happy.” But he says,
“I can tell you one mistake you’re making;
you’re drinking straight shots of Canadian
Club.”

In those days that was the popular drink.
Today it’s V-O. It’s the same kind of whiskey
made in Canada. But he says, “You’re drinking
two drinks to their one, because they always
order 7-Up highballs or different drinks like
that, which has much more, like at least six
ounces in volume, and you’re getting a one-
ounce of straight liquor, and no matter how
good the liquor is, you’re going to get drunk
pretty soon.” So he said, “I advise you to
change drinks.”

So I said, “OK. What do you advise me to
drink?”

He says, “Drink highballs.”

I said, “What kind of highballs?” I said,
“You have to get very elementary with me,
because I really don’t know how to drink. How
I hold this much liquor is a puzzle to me, too.”

You see my father was a pretty good
drinker, so I guess I inherited that from him.
I could hold quite a bit of liquor without
feeling drunk. I always made the rounds, and
I could be kind of tipsy, but I always got back
home and never got hurt, never created an
argument, and so that’s the way I spent my
boss’s money, but I wondered what my boss
thought of me, the manager of this particular
club that I worked for here in Reno, because
I would bring back change and just put it in
the bag he gave it to me in and say, “Here’s

your change.” I’d tell him how many tips I left,
and I never told him how many drinks I had,
because it varied so much, and he understood
that, but he got enough change back to know
that I wasn’t short-changing him. So we got
along fine.

Then one day he suggested to me, “You
don’t seem to drink that much, and you may
not enjoy drinking that much, so why don’t
you take somebody to dinner, one of my good
customers?” So I began doing that, and then
I got rid of the money pretty good, because
he said, “You can take your wife, and she can
make conversation with the lady, and you can
make conversation with the husband. Take
one couple or two couples or whatever.” There
were people that used to come from Truckee
and Susanville and Carson City, and I got to
know those people quite well, especially the
out-of-town people. He said, “You can take
them out for dinner, and I am sure they will
appreciate it.” So I did that, and, surprisingly,
I got rid of the money much easier. My job
was very easy. If I didn’t like somebody that
worked in the club, I’d tell the boss, “I wish
you’d release that man because

You have lived in Reno then since 1936. When
World War II started, how did the war affect
you ?

Well, it affected us greatly, because at that
point Japanese Nationals were not allowed
to own businesses or property, and so they
didn’t own this property; they were only
renting. When the banks froze the assets,
they didn’t take it. They just stopped letting
the banks give us any of it so that we could
continue operations, to pay our help, even.
This closed the club down effectively, and
without money to operate the place we had
to look for something to do outside of the
gambling business. There weren’t that many

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

bingo games that would hire me, because
I gave them such a hard time; we were the
foremost bingo game in town. So I’m sure
they wouldn’t hire me, and I wouldn’t want
to work for those kinds of people, anyway

So I said to Mr. Yamagashi, “The best
thing we can do is probably lease the place for
a year,” to see what would happen in a year’s
time. So he looked for probable people who
might want to run the place, and somehow
Bill Harrah, who had his own bingo place and
was not doing that well, wanted our place,
because this was a number one bingo place
in Reno. So he made a deal to rent the place,
and I guess he bid enough to get the sublease
for one year. So he took the place over and
operated it, and if you look at the results of
what happened through that operation, you
can see Harrah’s Club today with casinos in
Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Laughlin, and many
other places. Well, Bill Harrah passed away, so
he doesn’t get the benefit of it, but I am sure
that his widow is entitled to some things.

That’s the end of another era, when you
think about it—gaming as such. Bingo games
are too slow for the average gambler, so it isn’t
a popular thing, except where they offer large
prices like Indian reservations where they
can have thousands of people playing for one
small pot, and they could make all kinds of
money because of the number of people that
play the cards. If you want to do something
like that for people without giving any value
in return for their money, why, I guess you
can operate a bingo game. Other than that, I
don’t think it’s possible to make a profit.

So we went into different things. I have no
idea, because the war came so suddenly. The
thing was shut down, the place was closed. I
made up my mind that I just had to get a job,
because I needed money to support the family.
The first job I got was weeding garlic for these
Italian farmers around this area at fifty cents

an hour. We worked with the Indians who
were hired for the same rate. Well, fifty cents
an hour weeding onions doesn’t exactly keep
us eating very well, so I didn’t do that very
long. I talked to my friend in the East and he
said, “You could get a job out here, if you want
to come.”

But I said, “I don’t think I’d like to go out
there, because if I do, the weather is so hot and
sticky and miserable, we who were born in
the West are not used to that kind of weather,
and even in Kansas City, when I was there in
1933, they have rain drops as big as cupfuls at
a time, and how could I work in a place like
that?”

He said, “Come on out and try it.” So I
did, and he put me up in his two-bedroom
apartment.

Well, I was imposing on him, and I
couldn’t sleep well. I stayed there for three
months, and I said, “I’ll go back to Reno and
starve, because you’re paying a better wage,
but I’m not giving your boss a dollar’s worth
of work for the dollar he’s paying me, so I want
to go home.”

So I came back to Reno, and what little I
learned about the tire business there I used at
the local Firestone Store. I went in there, and
I asked the manager, “Can you give me a job
in your tire department somewhere, because
I have a little experience.”

He said to me, “Yes, we’ll try you for two
weeks, but you’re an Oriental, and I imagine
you’re Japanese, and if the customers don’t like
you, I’m going to have to get you to leave. So
I can’t give you a job as such, but we will give
you a two weeks’ trial period.”

So I said, “All right, I’ll work under those
conditions, because I need a job; I just have
to have some money.”

So I worked there, and there was one
mechanic there that used to think I was
Chinese. He said, “Those Japs,” and such as

Fred Aoyama

that, [laughter] So I didn’t pay any attention
to him; I just kept working. You know, he
became one of my very best friends after I
worked there awhile, because he found out
that I actually acted like a human being. He’d
tell me about his fishing days and his hobbies;
he was an older person and a very fine man.
He hated Japs, because he reads what he
reads in the newspapers and believes it, and
he thinks that we who are born in America
are the same as those people who bombed
Pearl Harbor, but he learned different, so he
changed, and so did the whole store.

I made it my business. I never mentioned
it to the manager, “But nobody has said
anything against me, have they?” Which
I knew they wouldn’t because I treated
everybody with courtesy.

Finally, I got enough raises that the
manager said to me, “I can’t give you any
more raises until I get a title for you, because
Sacramento Firestone says you’re the top paid
employee in the whole district.”

So I said, “You can give me the title, but I
don’t worry about it. You can call me whatever
you want; I’ll still do the same thing, but I’ve
just got to have a raise. I can’t work for the
putrid wages.” So he delayed these raises;
he would never get them from Sacramento,
because if he raises wages, that’s taking money
out of his profits, because he’s paid a bonus at
the end of each year, and if I earn more money,
he’s going to earn less, but if business is that
much better, then he gets better pay, but he’s
thinking about these things, so he can’t give
me that much of a raise, either. He just wants
to pay me enough to keep me there, that’s all,
and I knew this, so I said, “Are you going to
give me a raise or aren’t you?”

He said no, and we were on a particularly
busy day. He said, “I’ll tell Sacramento.”

I said, “You told Sacramento many
number of times, and I haven’t gotten my

raise, so I’m quitting.” I went outside, and I
took all the tools and threw them on the floor,
just like that, so he would be sure to hear
them, and I went in the back and out into the
alley and down the street to a bar, and I was
drinking.

This happened about, oh, one o’clock in
the afternoon. He came over there about four
o’clock, and he said, “You better come back
and stop this drinking. I won’t tell anybody
you were out here drinking for all afternoon.”

I said, “Who cares? I quit, and you have no
jurisdiction over me.” So I said, “I can’t take
this baloney any longer.”

So he said, “I definitely promise I’ll get you
a raise next week, if you come back to work.”

So I said, “All right. And if it isn’t in my
paycheck at the end of this week, why, you
know where I’m going.” So I followed him
back to the place and helped him close the
place up, and I went home. So after that I
knew that my way to win my point was throw
the tools down and walk out. So I did that to
him about three times, [laughter] And every
time he came after me, too, because he needed
me, because I knew every department, what
everybody had to do, where everything was.
The stock was upstairs in different places, and
he was just plain lost; he never had to do any
of that any more because of me. I had made
myself so valuable to him that he had to get
me back there, [laughter] and I think that hurt
his pride, but I am sorry, it was his own fault,
too.

I said, “Do you know what my next step is?
I want to go into business, not for Firestone,
and if you want to be in a partnership and
be in business .... These guys are so cheap;
they’re not going to give you any money. You
will always be under their thumb, and you
are always thinking about the five-hundred-
dollar bonus you’re going to get. I don’t
know how many of those you get a year ,but

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

you should get at least two, Fourth of July
and Christmas, because that was what I was
getting at the club.”

He said, “Well, I have a family to support.”

I said, “You can support them better with
your own business.” He showed me the books
over a period. I was there, I think, for four or
five years, and he was so proud, “We’re not in
the red ink anymore; we’re in the black ink!”
He said, “We’re doing this much, so my bonus
is going to be better.”

So I said, “Sure, but it’s limited. That stuff
you’re getting is peanuts. I know what kind of
money you should be earning. I know what
I should be earning. So I want to go into
business.”

OK, so we went into business. It took
me about six months before he would agree,
and during those six months I quit him, you
know, threw my tools down. So finally he said
OK, and we got the General Tire franchise;
completely different tire. We opened the
business, which we had for ten years. Of
course, the business is a proposition where
you have what they call a limited partnership.
I guess you know what that is. I was a limited
partner, because I didn’t have enough money
saved to be half and half with him, but my
work—I never did only one third of the
business or whatever—I did what had to
be done. I even worked on Saturdays and
Sundays, if it was necessary. He became the
politician; he became a city councilman, and
he was really getting up in the political world.

So finally, after, I think it was about the
sixth year, I said, “If you are going to continue
doing this, I’m leaving. I’ll have my own tire
shop, because you got to pay me off according
to the percentage, and I know the bookkeeper
who we hired, and he is a very fair person. He
will see that I get what I need.”

So he said, “You can’t quit me.” And he
stalled me. He said, “We don’t have enough

money to pay you off,” and all this stuff. So I
stayed there for almost ten years.

Finally, I said, “I’m leaving, and I’m going
to start suing you for that money, if you don’t
pay it, because you told me lies just to keep me
here. I cannot run the office and the outside
business, so I’m leaving.”

He said, “OK. I’ll pay you off,” because
he knew I was serious. So he paid me off.
See, I had three thousand dollars invested,
which became thirteen thousand dollars in
capital. So I’m walking around with money
in my pocket, but I was looking for a job or
whatever, because you feel freer when you
have this kind of money.

During the time I was there, since he was
on the city council, I got acquainted with the
assistant city manager. He said to me, “I have a
piece of property I want to buy, but I just don’t
have enough money, and I can’t get anybody
to go fifty-fifty partners with me, because I
don’t have much money saved up. If you can
buy half of it, and I buy half of it, why we can
manage.”

So I looked at the property. I didn’t know
anything about land, but I figured it’s pretty
good to have land. So he and I bought this
property, put so much down and so much
payments, and as soon as we bought the
property, one man came to us and said, “I
want one acre in this corner here. How much
do you want?”

So I asked my partner, “How much should
we sell it to him for? This is going to ease our
payments a little bit, if we sell it to him. He
only wants one acre in the far corner where
it’s out of the way.” I forgot the amount, but
I think he offered us fifteen hundred dollars.
You see, all of this property we had purchased
for three hundred an acre, but he offered us
fifteen hundred, so that was quite a good deal
for us. We got more money than we expected
for the property—five times as much. So he

Fred Aoyama

was happy, and so was I. We celebrated, had
dinner together.

He had to leave the country, because he
had a lot better job in California, and he said,
“If you want to buy my property, I’ll sell it to
you for five hundred an acre.” This was about
a year later.

I said, “I don’t think I can manage five
hundred an acre more than what I am paying
now, so I have to pass.” So he sold it—he
gave me first choice, but I couldn’t afford to
buy it. So he sold it to someone else, and he
left for California, and I’ve written letters
to him, because, thanks to him, I built up a
little capital, too, but I don’t know whatever
happened to him, because I never even knew
what town he moved to after years passed.

Then I joined organizations like the
Toastmasters Club, which is an excellent club
to learn to speak and become more confident
when you get up in a crowd to speak to people.
It’s difficult if you’ve never had any experience.
This man next door, while I was still in the
tire shop, said to me, “You have to become a
Toastmaster.” He kept coming over there and
saying, “Fred, are you going with me tonight?”
I would say some excuse for not going—no
real excuse, but I was just afraid.

That went on—this man kept after me—
for one full year. Every week when he had
to go to Toastmasters, he came to the place,
and I felt so uncomfortable, because I knew
he was coming. I said, “I’m going to have to
go with him, because he just doesn’t give up.”
So when he came, I said, “I’m going tonight.
I’ll go home and change my clothes and be
with you.” That’s my first experience with the
Toastmasters Club.

I met somebody else who was a first-time
person. He became mayor of Winnemucca.
He moved there. He became a good speaker.
I guess I didn’t become a very good speaker,
but at least I learned by watching how other

people do it. I made many friends who taught
me. After my drinking experiences with the
club, I was able to drink with people, to talk
with them, stay at the Toastmasters Club until
three o’clock in the morning with them to talk
about different things that we argued about.

You are not supposed to be with a club
more than two years, because you get to
know the people so well that their criticism
is something that you already know they are
going to say, because you get to know each
individual that well. They say you should
move to another club after two years, but
I think I stayed there three or four. Then I
moved to another club. When they formed the
Gourmet Club, which were all experienced
people but from different other clubs, I stayed
with them for another three or four years, but
then I got tired of it, so I quit.

Well, in the meantime, I joined the
Masonic fraternity and became a Mason
and Scottish Riter and a Shriner. They say
if you become president of Toastmasters
Club, which I did before I went there, you
will become president of any club you want
to be. Well, I don’t think I necessarily want
to be a president of any club, because you
have too many responsibilities, and you have
to work so hard, but you know how to be a
president, to be impartial. You don’t enter into
arguments when two people are arguing. You
create order and see that they both have an
equal opportunity to settle their differences. I
don’t tell them which one won the argument;
the listening crowd tells them that. You are
only a judge as president, except leadership
situations, where, if the club is not able to
conduct their meetings at the same place,
you have to locate a new place. I think that’s
a responsibility of a president, to get another
location to do it. Then you have other people
you can discuss it with, so you do. But a
president isn’t that all powerful; you shouldn’t

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

be. So I had no desire to be president of any
club, and the Japanese-Americans had gotten
to such situations that I had to be president
three times, because the club would come
before me, because it had up and down
membership.

But today I will never offer to be president
of a club, because the new, younger generation
have different ideas. I don’t want to wish my
ideas to be performed by them, which I am
sure I wouldn’t be that successful if I tried that.
I enjoyed the Masons, and my wife is in the
Eastern Star, which is the ladies’ organization
of the Masons. She became one of the national
officers of Eastern Star, so she feels that she has
accomplished her goals. We have friends all
over that I can think of. Cahfornia has the most,
because they’re the easiest to visit, but we don’t
visit as much as we used to, because at my age I
don’t think I want to die on the road, [laughter]
because I can’t see well, or something may
happen. So we keep traveling to a minimum.

Did you and your wife get married here in
Reno?

No, I married her in Los Angeles, because
she’s from there. I couldn’t afford to marry her,
because I didn’t have enough money to offer
her any kind of a married life, but when I got
this job in Reno, I knew that I could support
a wife, so I decided, and we got married
the following June. We got married in the
Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles and came
back here.

Well, I feel like I’ve been a very fortunate
person, because good things happened to me.
By living in Reno, I didn’t have to go to a camp
as such, because I’m outside of the Western
Defense Command, which evacuated all the
coastal states.

That’s right. So do you have children?

Oh, yes. I have a daughter that’s in
Danville, California, a son in Alameda,
Cahfornia. You see, Cahfornia is a place where
it seems greener most of the time. This is a
desert, and when they see that greenness of
Cahfornia, I think it affects them, because
they’ve moved there and never returned,
[laughter] They come to visit us. Our son-
in-law is working for Kaiser Aluminum in
Pleasanton, which is south of Danville. I think
he has some officer capacity there, because we
don’t discuss it at all, but I know that he has
privileges that ordinary employees don’t. Our
grand-children—granddaughters—we have
three from our daughter. The eldest received
a scholarship to U.C. Irvine, because she had
quite a good singing voice, and she was in the
high school play—this Danville high school.
She followed it, but then opportunities in
Irvine, which is very close to Los Angeles,
aren’t as good as you might expect.

Well, that daughter worked in a place called
Cocoa’s Restaurant, or something, which hires
people who are studying theatrical arts and
voice and things like that, because Irvine is
supposedly the place to go for that sort of
thing. Even in medicine they’re becoming
very prominent now. It’s a big campus. It
wasn’t so big when she went there, but she
even went to New York for six months by
herself, working at jobs, and had an offer to
work in Yul Brynner’s musical; it’s that play
about the dancer— The King and I. She could
have applied for work, but she felt that Yul
Brynner was beginning to fail in age, and she
was looking for the future. I guess he passed
away as she predicted, and she came back to
the West Coast, but she got six months or so
of experience with the New York theatrical
group. She got acquainted with this Queen
Mary Group that used to meet at the Queen
Mary in Long Beach, and different places

Fred Aoyama

where they have things like that, but she is
talented. Yet, I think parts for her would be
very minimal, because she is so small and
short. She isn’t tall enough to accept parts, I
don’t think. She came up to sing for my wife’s
installations and to various offices of the
Eastern Star and the Daughters of the Nile
who are wives of Shriners. In the meantime,
she met someone that she became interested
in and got married, and they live now south
of Los Angeles in a place called Rancho Santa
Margarita. I don’t know where it is, because
I’ve never been there.

The second daughter graduated from
U.C.L.A., and she is working in Marin County,
which is north of San Francisco. She does
different businesses and travels and organizes
businesses for this man who is quite wealthy.
She has been to Taiwan two or three times; to
Korea, I think, once, and Hong Kong once,
Puerto Rico, New York, and she has traveled
extensively. She sold a house she bought, so I
don’t know where to find her now. [laughter]
I will find out very shortly.

The youngest daughter went to school at
U.C. San Diego, and she worked in the school
there for about a year or so, I guess. Then, she’s
back in Danville. She’s single and working for
Frito Lay, of all people, in the office, of course,
not making potato chips or things, [laughter]
But she has an excellent job there as office
help. Frito Lay is moving into Pleasanton,
because they’re in San Jose now, but they’re
transferring their offices and factory into the
Pleasanton area.

Now, my son’s daughter went to U.C.
Santa Cruz. They all went to different schools,
strangely. She did that because she’s her
mother’s daughter, and she likes to be near
mother to come home and visit. It’s only less
than fifty miles from Alameda, and yet the
last six months of her university career, I
think, she’s transferred to U.C.L.A. to get the

experience of a larger university. What she’s
going to do with something, I don’t know.

The son, the only boy — four
granddaughters and one grand-son I have—
he is finishing high school shortly, and I don’t
know what he’s going to do. [laughter] And
that’s about all I can tell you, I think, but I’m
very proud that all of our kids have gotten
decent educations, and they are going to have
a much better life than I had to start out with.

But I’m very thankful that we own a home
here and are able to live in retirement without
becoming homeless, [laughter] I’m glad that
you came to talk to me, and I don’t know how
you’re going to use this, but....

I needed it, and I really appreciate your help.

Well, as soon as you began talking to me
on the phone .... I’ve never done this sort of
thing before with a young person like you, but
you have a every nice approach, and without
it, I don’t think you can get interviews the way
you do. I don’t think even Henry would have
spoken to you, Henry Hattori. Oh, you’ve got
to meet David Baba. He’s an attorney here.

Mary Date

Noriko Kunitomi: Today is November 4, 1992.
I am interviewing Mrs. Mary Date at her house
in Reno, Nevada. The interview will be about
Japanese in Nevada and in the United States.
Mrs. Date, does the University of Nevada Oral
History Program have your permission to make
available to the public the tapes and transcripts
of this interview?

Mary Date: Yes.

To start with, I am interested in basic
information. For example, when did your
family come to the United States?

I have my father’s old passport somewhere,
but I think he came about 1906. My mother
did not come with him. She came later as a
picture bride. Sashin Kekkon.

So he picked out her picture after he came to
the United States and wanted to get married?

She came, I think, about 1916. She is from
Kumoto Ken; my father is from Fukuoka Ken.

Do you remember how old they were at the
time?

When my father came?

Yes.

I’m not sure. I don’t think he was twenty.

Has he ever told you about the reasons why he
came to the United States?

Not really. I’ve wondered, but it’s too late
now.

Do you know when your parents came to
Nevada?

1933.1 was born in Nebraska, and then I
grew up in Colorado until I was thirteen. Then
we moved to Nevada; to Fallon. We stayed
there one year, and then came to Reno. We’ve
been here ever since. My mother and father
both died here. My mother died when I was
very young; I was fourteen. I am the oldest of

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

seven children, and I helped my father raise
them. He was a farmer. After he retired from
farming, he came here to live with me for
fourteen years.

Was he a farmer since he came to the United
States?

He was a farmer most of his life. I think
probably that’s all he knew how to do.

What kind of farming did he do?

Truck gardening. He grew vegetables, and
he bunched carrots and onions and things like
that, and then took them to the market every
day.

Do you know why your family moved from
Nebraska to Colorado?

No. He did big farming in Colorado. They
raised melons and sugar beets, corn, and about
in the 1930s, many families left the farms in
Colorado because of drought. So he came to
Nevada. He was going to raise melon seeds
in Fallon. He had a friend who was going to
promote that, but the melon seeds sprouted
inside the melon when the melons were ripe,
so that was no good. So then he came to Reno.

What did he do here in Reno?

Truck garden. I had four brothers, and
they used to help. Then the war broke out, and
one by one, they all volunteered and left, so
then he had to quit doing that. Then he came
to live with me.

When did you get married?

1941. The year the war broke out. At that
time my husband had a fish market where the

Hilton is now on Sierra and Commercial Row
on the south side of the railroad tracks, but we
had a bad time, because a lot of people were
not patronizing our store because we were
Japanese, and restaurants did the same. We
stayed there for about twenty years. It wasn’t
an easy living.

Could you tell me more about the fish market?

Well, at that time we were the only
Oriental store here. We carried rice and
shoyu and all the Japanese things, so all the
Japanese people from, oh, I would say, a fifty
mile radius came into the store. The girls who
were married to servicemen and lived at Stead
Air Force Base—they came. It was interesting.
We knew all the Japanese then, but we don’t
know any of them now. [laughter]

Could you tell me about every day life?

We worked there from eight until six. I
didn’t go every day, but my husband did.

Where did he get his fish?

We shipped the fish in from Seattle and
California, for example, San Pedro. San Pedro
is a big fishing center in southern California.
We carried things like tofu that we got from
Sacramento. There was nobody here that
made it; nobody does, still, you know. We
have to get it all shipped in.

The last time I talked with your husband, Mr.
Ken Date on the phone, he said he came to
Nevada and entered the fish market business,
because, at the time, Nevada had a lot offish
here.

Well, he had a sister who was married
to the man who owned the fish market,

Mary Date

originally. That’s how he came here, and
he likes to fish. There isn’t much to fish
here, anymore, really, but then he still goes
fishing all the time. That’s where he is today,
[laughter] He’s out at Pyramid.

When he brings home fish from Pyramid Lake
or the Truckee River, do you cook it?

I don’t like a lot of the fish that he catches
here. He gets fresh water fish like trout in the
river and the lakes. I don’t like trout. I like
ocean fish to eat. The fish that we sold at the
market was mostly ocean fish, like salmon
and sole, crabs, lobster, all that kind of thing.
I don’t like trout. He eats it; I cook it for him;
he’ll eat it, and the kitty eats it. We have a kitty.

How did you learn how to cook fish and
Japanese food?

From the cookbooks. I didn’t know how
to cook, because I was only fourteen when
my mother died, and I never cooked until
she died. So I’ve learned. I have hundreds of
cookbooks. I like to cook.

What about your father? Did your father cook
sometimes?

He cooked sometimes, but not very much.
When he was living here with me, he would
cook when I was at work sometimes, but not
very good, [laughter]

Did your father and children expect you to cook
Japanese food mostly?

No. They don’t know Japanese food,
because at that time we couldn’t get very
much Japanese food here. I know one time,
my father took my sister, who was about six
years old, to California for a friend’s wedding,

and for the first time she ate maki sushi with
the nori around it. She peeled it all off. My
father said it was because she never saw it
before. I never made sushi, and she was only
two when my mother died, so she would not
know. I never knew how to make them at that
time. I’ve learned since.

My father spoke half English and half
Japanese to us, so I’ve forgotten how to speak
Japanese. When I was in Colorado, I went to
Japanese school in the summertime. They
had a man who earned his tuition to go to the
University of Chicago. He was from Japan,
and he was earning his tuition by teaching us
Japanese during the summer months. I went
six years. I could read newspapers, and we
were just learning to write with Fude when we
came to Nevada. If your mother is gone, you
don’t speak Japanese at home. Between my
brothers and sisters, we spoke English most
of the time, so I’ve forgotten Japanese.

But your father could speak pretty good
English?

Not good English, broken English,
[laughter]

Understandable?

Well, he would ask us to explain the
newspapers to him. He could read the local
newspapers, and he could understand. He
always used to get the Japanese Shimbun from
San Francisco. We used to get the Japanese
newspaper. I don’t how large a circulation
they have anymore. I don’t think it’s very
good, because most of the Issei have passed
away.

There are a lot of Japanese students here.

I know a lot of students here.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

But they have subscribed to Japanese newspapers
from San Francisco.

They do? They can still get it? Oh, like the
Nichibei Times ? Oh, I didn’t know it was still
going, because I don’t see it.

Could you tell me how much education you’ve
had?

I just went to high school. My mother
died, and I couldn’t go to school for a few
years, because I had to stay home and take
care of my brothers and sisters. We used to
live on a ranch up there where Bally’s is now.
(Well, it changed to the Reno Hilton.) We
lived out there just past the Indian camp. I
used to walk every morning from there to
Reno High School, which was close to where
the Sundowner is now. That’s after I got up
and made breakfast and cleaned it up and
made lunches for the rest of them to go to
school. If I had to do that now, I would die!
[laughter] But when you’re young, and you
want to go to school, and you feel that you’ve
been deprived, because of the circumstances,
you have a strong will. That was a long time
ago.

What about your brothers and sisters? Did they
get a higher education?

No. They just went to high school. One
sister went to Salt Lake City to become a
nurse, because we didn’t have a nursing
school here, but she got married before she
finished. Then I have one brother who was
a high school drop out. He joined the army,
and he got his GED (General Equivalency
Diploma) while he was in the service, and
then he picked up university credits here and
there. Usually, when you go to the university,
your credits are all on one sheet—your four

years. His university credits are like this
[gestures with hands wide apart] because he
got two credits here, two credits there. He
stayed in the service for over twenty years,
and he has a university degree now. He finally
got a university degree. Two of my brothers
stayed in the service for over twenty years.
The youngest one was a prisoner of war in
the Korean War. He was over there over two
years, but he came back.

They all volunteered, and some of the
Japanese people thought they were crazy,
because at that time a lot of the Japanese
were in [a relocation] camp, like my in¬
laws. They came from camp. They came
from camp to here, and then they went
back to California where they came from.
But it’s hard to understand; I’m sure it was
hard for them to understand how people
like my brothers could volunteer, when they
put Nihongin in camps. You’ve read about
that.

It’s been an interesting life. I have one
daughter; she was born and raised here.
She finished college here, and she went to
San Francisco. She worked for the Internal
Revenue Service as an accountant. She doesn’t
work anymore, [laughter]

She retired?

She didn’t retire; she quit, [laughter] She
didn’t work long enough to retire; let’s put it
that way.

Your daughter got married and she has a family
with her?

Her husband’s family lives in Berkeley.
I just have one daughter, and that’s the one
who’s coming today. She’s retired, and they
have no children, so I’m not a grandma,
[laughter]

Mary Date

Did any of your brothers or sisters work in the
railroad?

No. I don’t think my father ever did. When
he first came, he came to San Francisco, and
he worked in California awhile, and then I
think he went to Idaho for awhile. Then he
went to Nebraska, because he had friends.
You go where your friends are, you know.
That’s how come he ended up in Nebraska for
several years. I don’t know how many years,
but he told me he used to work at the YMCA
in Omaha, waiting on tables while he went
to school. He could write better English than
any of us. He wrote nice writing in English,
the Palmer Method. I think he worked there
for quite a few years, because he didn’t get
married for about ten years, I think, after he
came. Where are you from?

Osaka.

Osaka. After I quit working about twelve
years ago, when I was sixty-two, I took a trip
to Japan. I went on a tour with my youngest
sister, and she doesn’t speak any Japanese. We
went on a tour, and then afterwards, we spent
about four days. We went to visit relatives in
Fukuoka. It was interesting, [laughter]

Did you see a lot of your relatives there?

Relatives? Yes, a lot of my father’s relatives,
but I didn’t see my mother’s relatives. Some
day I would like to see them, but now I don’t
I feel like I can go.

So your father, after he came here, he kept in
contact with relatives in Japan?

Not too much, but he never went back.
He heard from them. One of my cousins had
a picture of a soldier on the wall, and he said

it was his brother who died in, I think it was
Saipan, in the war. My father wrote to his
family and told them that his sons were all in
the army. I had four brothers. They were all
in the service.

Did your sisters and brothers and your father
still keep some Japanese heritage?

We ate rice. We ate rice, maybe, once a
day, but we didn’t eat it for breakfast, you
know, like a lot of the California people;
they eat rice and misoshiru and all that for
breakfast. We never did that, but I think it
was because it was not available. I don’t think
that I cooked Japanese foods until after I
was married, because my husband is from
California, from a large Japanese community,
and he likes Japanese foods. My daughter,
who was born and raised here, likes all kinds
of Japanese foods. She likes things that I don’t
like.

Does she eat raw fish?

Oh, yes, I like that.

Oh, really?

Oh, yes. We had that at the store.

That’s nice. It’s expensive.

It is expensive, I know. We just had friends
come from California, and when they’d come,
they always stopped in Sacramento, and they’d
buy us sashimi and tofu and kamaboko and all
that. I like Japanese foods, I think, better than
Yoshoku now. As you grow older, you don’t
like so much meat.

How about you people, do you miss your
Japanese foods? I cook Japanese foods.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Do you? You go to the Tokyo Market?

To the Korean Market in Sparks.

Oh, the Korean Market? In Sparks?

Yes, in Sparks, near Prater and Pyramid Way.
It’s a small store?

Yes, and just across from Raley’s there is a kind
of small marketplace, you know, a plaza, and
one of the stores is Collier Market.

Oh, really? I don’t go to Sparks too often.
It’s kind of out of the way Usually, we get
our stuff at Tokyo Market, but they are so
expensive.

That’s why I go to the Collier Market. It is less
expensive. Not much.

Well everything is, anyway.

Almost twice. Do you ever have Japanese
activities?

We have the JACL, Japanese-American
Citizens League. That’s the only thing. That’s
all there is here, and that isn’t very good,
because the younger people are not that
interested. It’s just mostly for social purposes.

Could you tell me about when you were young,
and you celebrated New Year’s ? The Japanese
celebrate New Year’s more, but you don’t hear
it here in the United States.

I used to, when we had the fish market,
because we used to get sashimi and tako; we
used to get kamaboko and all that; and we
tried to get sashimi, but we usually didn’t get
it. At that time, I guess, I used to make sushi

a little bit, but, it’s too much work, too, when
you’re working, [laughter] But now as we get
older, we get lazy, and we don’t do that very
much. We used to get together at New Year’s.
We used to go from house to house, but not
anymore.

When you were in Nebraska, did you have
some kind of different activities, like celebrate
different days?

Well, there were more Japanese there, and
they were all farm people, and so I think we
had more activities, but farm people are busy
people, and the only time they had leisure time
was in the wintertime. They used to celebrate
New Year’s then; I remember that. They used
to make sake, [laughter] My father did not
drink, but a lot of his friends did. Now, I have
just one brother who is married to Nihongin.
The rest of them are married to Caucasians,
so then, you don’t eat Oriental foods so much.
But when my brothers come to visit, they like
to come and eat at my house, because I cook
a lot of things. I have one brother living in
Florida; one sister in Hawaii; one sister in San
Francisco, and I have one brother here. I have
one brother in Mountain View, California; he’s
married to Nihongin. And I have one brother
who died.

Do you remember when your father and
mother taught you about Japanese values, like
Japanese duties? For example, you are Japanese;
you should be a hard worker; cooperation is
important, and things like that.

I think we were too young yet for them
to try, and then they were too busy trying to
earn a living. I know there are families who
lived here and did learn Japanese ways. There
was one family that worked for the railroad,
and that mother taught her children how to

Mary Date

read and write in Nihongo. Like us, we were
supposed to have learned when we went to
school, but then when you don’t use it, you
forget. But when my father passed away, he
still had Japanese citizenship, so I had to
report to his village about his death, and you
have to fill in that paper. I had Japanese people
help me fill it in, and with a dictionary I could
remember. He died of a stroke, that’s noikutzu.
I remembered how to write Nihongo, and
they were shocked that I knew. Some things
you can remember a little bit, but if I had
to write a letter now, I could never do it in
Japanese. Before I went to Japan, I contacted
my relatives, and I sent them a letter that I
typed on the typewriter so they wouldn’t have
any trouble reading my writing, [laughter]

Did they speak English in Japan?

No. They’d write letters back to me in
Japanese. I could read that, but then I’d write
them a letter back in English.

When you raised your daughter, did you raise
her in the American way or in the Japanese
way?

In the American way, because I don’t
know the Japanese way. [laughter]

What about your husband? Didn’t he want his
daughter to be Japanese oriented, a person who
has Japanese values in her life?

No, he didn’t. I did most of the disciplining
or whatever. No, he didn’t think too much
about things like that. She went to Reno High
School; she was the only Nihongin in her class,
and there were about three hundred and fifty
students in her graduating class. So she didn’t
know Japanese people. When she went to
the university, there was one professor up

there; I’ve forgotten his name, but he speaks
Japanese. He said Date-san, and she was
really startled, because when she went to high
school, or all her life, everybody called her
Date. That’s the easiest way to say it. If you say
it the Japanese way, then they get confused.
So it’s always been Date. So she went to the
university and this professor said Date-san.
She didn’t know any Japanese. Then when
she went to San Francisco to work, there’s so
many more opportunities in the larger cities
to learn. So she took classes in conversational
Japanese, and then she’s been trying to learn
how to write. She’s been to Japan about
three times. I said, “Why don’t you give up?”
[laughter]

She said, “No, I want to learn, so I can talk
when I go to Japan.”

I told her, “You’ll never make it!” [laughter]
Because they talk so fast. It’s just like us; we
probably talk too fast. When you first came,
wasn’t it hard?

Yes, you’re right.

Yes, it’s the same thing. And now she’s
involved in ikebana [Japanese art of arranging
flowers]. She loves that. In fact, I think she
has a certificate to teach. She really loves that.
So she says that she would never come back
to Reno to live, because Reno doesn’t have
anything to offer compared to the larger cities,
[laughter] She is taking lessons in Japanese
cooking. She likes to cook Japanese. Her
husband is Nisei. She is Sansei.

So her husband is much older than she is?

Yes, he is a bit older. He likes Japanese
foods. Like I say, she likes more Japanese
things than I do.

Yes, I can tell.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

It’s funny! [laughter]

Could you tell me about what kind of a social
life you had?

Social life? We didn’t have too much
time for a social life, because we were too
busy making a living, really [laughter] We
associated with Nihongin mostly We used to
have picnics, and we had get-togethers here,
but JACL was a lot more active in the old days
than it is now. Have you ever been to a JACL
meeting here?

No, I haven’t, but I’m planning to go to one on
the twenty-second of this month.

They probably make mochi with the mochi
machines.

I haven’t eaten mochi for three years.

Oh you haven’t eaten any mochi for three
years?

No. [laughter]

Well, now, I don’t care about mochi. I
don’t care if I don’t have that, [laughter] So I
probably won’t go, but you better go; you take
some of your friends and go. You tell them
that I said so! [laughter]

What about the social life of your mother? Did
she have a social life?

No, not much. In Colorado, they were
mostly farmers, but they used to get together
at New Year’s and at the Japanese school.
That was about it. It was a hard life. It was
not easy, and you wonder how the Issei ever
came to this country, to a strange country.
My mother told me that when she first came,

she came to Seattle, and then they went by
train to Nebraska. For the first time, she saw
people with yellow hair and brown hair, and
blue eyes and brown eyes. It must have been
very strange, [laughter] She told me.

I’m amazed that your mother came here as
a picture bride, because she did not wish to
come here, if your father did not pick her up
as a bride?

Well, many people came like that, as
picture brides. She told me that for about six
months she went to live with his family first.
I guess, maybe his mother wanted to see if
she would be a suitable wife or something. I
don’t know. I don’t know how people could
do things like that, but I guess that’s the
way they did things. A lot of people came
like that, by the thousands. Well, I’ve been
reading so many stories like that now. When
I was a child, she never told me too much
about her life in Japan. See that picture on
the wall there in the middle, that one of
Fujiyama? That is machine embroidery.
She did that in Japan, so she must have had
a sewing machine. Nowadays, in the craft
shops they have machine embroidery, but it’s
nothing like that. I like to sew, and they tell
me, “Why don’t you take a class in machine
embroidery?” But it doesn’t appeal to me,
because I’ve seen better. That’s silk thread.
She said they used to raise silk worms, and
they colored . . . they dyed the silk. I had
other pieces of flowers and things like that,
but I gave some to my brothers and sisters,
because I didn’t want to keep all of them, but
that’s a machine embroidery, and she was a
good seamstress, I think. That’s my mother
and father over there.

When she came here, did your mother wear
kimono then?

Mary Date

No, she didn’t come in kimonos, [laughter]
I just cannot imagine people coming to a
strange country with strange customs, strange
dress; the food is different. She lived such a
short life.

Was she sick?

No, she died of child birth, trying to have
a baby. She was not forty years old, and she
left seven children. You have more questions
to ask? I want to show you something.

Yes, I have a couple of questions.

My father, when he lived with me, used
to go up to the cemetery here, the Hillside
Cemetery. One day he went up there, and
he wrote these things down. These are
markers that they had for people who were
buried there. I’m sure that most of these are
gone now, because the cemetery has been
ruined, but, see, this shows you how early the
Nihongin people came to Reno and died.

Yes, 1912.

You can have this article; I have other

copies. This man,_, was

one of the oldest Japanese to come to America.
But then, they said afterwards that it really
wasn’t; he wasn’t the oldest; there were others
who came here. He was buried here in Reno at
that cemetery, and the cemetery was going to
be ruined, overrun, you know, so the JACL got
permission to dig up the remains and re-bury
him at Mountain View Cemetery. You could
have this. They had a ceremony here. Oh,
see, this is when they re-buried the remains
at Mountain View. They had a Bonson come
from Penryn. At that time my father was gone,
and these are a few of the Issei who came, you
know.

Are those people all living in Reno?

Yes, these older people were living in
Reno, that’s right, and most of the others were,
too. These were JACL members.

Oh, I know him, he’s Mr. Fred Aoyama, isn’t
he? Maybe not.

No, no. This one is Wilson Makabe. He
passed away last year or so; you probably read
about him.

Oh, I see. I was looking for his name in the
phone book, and I couldn’t find his name.

No, he died. Wilson Makabe died. I don’t
think Aoyama is in this picture. I don’t think
Bud Fujii is, either. See, they were all working.
This was in 1969. That’s over twenty years ago.
[laughter]

These are old pictures. Do you have pictures of
your family, of your father and your mother?

Oh yes, I do. These are our children. We
had International Festival and we had a girl
teach the kids odori, and then we had to go
buy kimonos for them, you know. This is
mostly JACL stuff. Not very interesting. Here’s
some of the kids. And then the girls borrowed
Nihongi. This is my sister; she was still here
then.

How old are you? [laughter]

That’s my girl right here. I will show you
some old pictures I got together.

Is this 1926?

1926, yes. I’ll show you where I am—right
there! [laughter] This is 1927.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Oh, more people.

Yes, I guess we had more people.

Those men are teachers?

Well, this is the same thing, yes. We had
the same teacher. This is my father. They had a
school board, and he was on the school board,
[laughter] I think that’s why he’s standing next
to the sensei [teacher].

He’s the only teacher?

For a while we had only one teacher, and
then pretty soon they got so many children,
they had to get another teacher. Oh, here’s the
teacher here, yes. This is 1928. The teacher is
down here in the front somewhere with us—
right there. Then we got another teacher. This
is the other teacher. See, there are about fifty
or sixty kids, and I had no idea how much it
cost my father for us to go to Japanese school,
because that’s the way this man was earning
his tuition. He was going to the University
of Chicago. He used to go home. He used
to come back at Christmas and Easter and
he’d give us tests. We were supposed to be
writing nikki (diary) every day. [laughter]
I never wrote any. Just before he came out
with a whole bunch of stuff at one time, they
know. We didn’t fool them, I don’t think. This
is about the year that we left Colorado. See,
there weren’t so many people going to school,
because times were rough. This is the picture
of the first graduating class. This girl and this
girl graduated. I think they went eight years.
They graduated. This is the school board. Yes,
these are all farm people; this is the sensei. But,
see, this man’s got tabi on. [laughter] You see
that. Yes, it’s a tabi. They went and had that
picture taken. This is what my father used to
do, raise melons. This is a packing shed. We

had Mexican workers; they used to pick it
and pack it in the crates, and then we used to
hire somebody to haul. We used to have crate
makers.

These people are all workers at your farm?

Yes, they are Mexicans.

After your mother died, or before your mother
died?

This is in Colorado, yes.

Did your father always hire Mexican people?

In Colorado we had Mexican labor, yes.

But not in Nevada here?

No, not in Nevada. This is my friend’s
place, and that’s there. Here’s another one,
another year. Let’s see, I guess, I must have
been at Japanese school when they came. This
photographer was a Japanese photographer,
and he came from Pueblo in the summertime
when the farmers had money; then he’d come
around and take pictures like this. See, those
are willow tree branches that they put on top
for shade. I think that year we had a Nihongin
man from California come, and he packed the
melons in the crates. That’s my mother.

Oh, is she? She’s pretty. So this is you?

I think so. [laughter]

You just look like your mother. There is a
resemblance.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know who I look
like, [laughter] Yes, that’s about all that I have
that’s really interesting.

Mary Date

So this is your house then?

That’s the back of our house where we
lived, yes.

In Colorado?

Yes. [laughter]

Wow, so interesting!

I know when they would get pictures like
this then my mother would send them to her
family in Japan, and my father would send
them to his family in Japan. That’s what he
used to do in Colorado. They farmed big—like
about two, three hundred acres. But here in
Reno, when he did truck farming, it was just
like about ten, fifteen acres, because it’s a lot
of work. This is my friend’s family. He must
have made money, because he went back to
Japan with his family, [laughter]

His family is still in Japan?

Yes.

He never come back to the United States
anymore, after he went back to Japan?

Oh, no, he stayed there. He stayed with
his family in Japan. See, the old cars that we
used to have? Well, what is that? I must have
it written—about 1926. That’s more than sixty
years ago; that’s about sixty-five, sixty-six
years ago. My goodness! [laughter]

I’ve never seen the long pictures of that place.
I just know that they’re this big.

Yes, I think the fathers got together and
decided they’d better teach the kids some
Nihongo, you know. The teachers tried to

teach us manners and how to bow and all that
sort of thing, and being that we were born
in America, we thought, “We don’t have to
bow to anybody.” At least, that’s how I used
to think, [laughter]

Buddy Fujii

Noriko Kunitomi: Today is November 2, 1992.
I am interviewing Mr. Buddy Fujii today at
his office in Sparks, Nevada. The interview
will be on ancestors, decision making, social
life, and different lifestyles in Nevada. I have
your agreement here that the University of
Nevada Oral History Program may open this
information on the interview to the public. I am
on this project to learn about Japanese people’s
life in Nevada after the Japanese immigrants
came to the United States, especially before
World War II. Do you know when your family
first came to the United States, and also to
Nevada?

Buddy Fujii: My father first came to the
United States probably in 1914, 1915, and
in Southern California. He came to Nevada
about 1928. My mother came to the United
States probably about 1925 or 1926, and she
also came to California first, and then came
to Reno with my father. She didn’t come right
with my father; she came after he was here.

They met here?

No, they met in California. After my father
was here, they came here.

Do you know which part of Japan they came
from?

Fukuoka.

Both of them?

Yes, as far as I know. My mother for sure,
and I am almost positive my father, but he
never talked about Japan and his family. My
mother talked a little bit about hers, but he
didn’t want anybody to talk about Japan,
because we were in the United States, and he
said we’ve got to be like Americanized here, so
I know very little about his family at all, other
than that he had three brothers, and there is
only one of them living today.

So all three of his brothers came to the United
States?

No. They all stayed in Japan. He was the
only one who came. They all stayed in Japan.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

The only reason I know this is because just
recently he corresponded with the only
remaining brother.

What about your mother’s side?

Well, on my mothers side, I know very
little. Most of her family, I think, stayed in
Japan. She was married prior to meeting
my father and had some other children who
would be my half brothers and sisters. As far
as I know, there are probably two or three of
them some place in the United States, and we
now have a member of the family doing some
genealogy, trying to track them down. So we
are hopeful we can find some of the people
and talk to them, if they’ll talk to us. [laughter]

Do you know if she got married in Japan and
then came here?

Originally, she was married in Japan and
came here, and I don’t know what happened
then, until she married my father.

Did your mother come to the United States
permanently, to stay here, or just for a while,
to get money to get back to Japan?

I don’t know. I can’t answer that one. My
father came here to stay here. He did not
want to go back. My mother maybe just came,
you know, temporarily, but she did stay and
eventually became a citizen. Both of them
became citizens. My mother became one
first, though. It was more important for her
to become one first, before it was important
to my father.

Is there any reason for that?

I don’t know. I just know that when she
was still alive and we were teenagers, she

said she wanted to become a citizen. This
was right after World War II, and during
the war even. Then after the war, she said
she wanted to become a citizen. Well,
as soon as it became available to Issei to
become citizens, she wanted to become one,
because some of her other friends wanted
to become citizens. So I remember helping
her study, so she could pass the test, and
she became a citizen about a year before
my father.

Were you a student at the time?

Yes.

I assume you were born in the United States.

Yes.

Do know why your parents came to Nevada,
particularly?

Well, my father came here for two
reasons—two jobs. He was a gardener, but
he was also a professional gambler. He was a
card player, and since gambling was legal in
Nevada, he came here initially to work and
then, eventually, just to play cards. He did
very well. He was a well-known card player
here in Reno, but he also had his gardening
business, and it eventually became a nursery
business—nursery and landscaping. That’s all.
As a child I worked there, and eventually, after
I graduated from college, I went back into
the business with him for quite a few years.
But that’s what brought him here, was just
the gardening and primarily the professional
gambling. But he knew, eventually, with the
family, it was just not good to be a gambler,
so he had to have something that was more
stable. That’s why he developed the nursery
business.

Buddy Fujii

In California was there any possibility or place
your father could learn how to gamble?

Oh sure. Los Angeles, all over in the
major cities in California, there were card
houses. It was illegal, but you could still play.
They had a lot of them. So, I think, for a lot
of young men that came here without any
wives, or single men, in order for recreation
or something to do, they would gamble. Some
of them were good at it, and some weren’t. So I
think most of the gaming establishments here
in Nevada liked to have the Oriental people
come, because most of them are gamblers.
Every man likes to gamble, I think, but some
people are a lot better. He was fairly proficient
with cards, and that’s all he ever played was
cards, primarily the two games: five-card stud
poker, and panguingue. That’s the only two
card games he played.

What about your mother? Was she a housewife?

She was a housewife, yes, and when we
had the nursery, she helped with the nursery.
I remember, as a child, we had orchards, and
we also had gardens, like vegetable gardens.
We had a stand in front, so she sold fruits and
vegetables there, as well as the nursery. This
was when we were first starting in. It wasn’t
a real lucrative business in those days to
have a nursery, but most of the business was
gardening. Eventually, the gardening kind of
went away, and the nursery became the main
part of the business—the nursery and the
landscaping. We boys grew up there. I have
two brothers, so when we got old enough to
work and help, then the business started to
expand, because we had some labor, and they
could do more work.

Your father didn’t hire any Mexican people or
any white people?

Well, very seldom. During World War II,
he brought a Nisei family out of one of the
camps in Utah to come and work for him,
and that was the only help he had until we
got old enough, and then that individual
eventually started his own gardening business
and retired in that business. But then, right
after he retired, he passed away, but he did
well enough to start his own business and be
very successful. But that was the only help he
had—permanent help. When we got older,
he would hire casual labor. It didn’t matter
what race; there were all different kinds, and
we would hire them for maybe three months
when we were really busy, and then we would
have a lot of work. Then after that, they would
be laid off, and we would continue with just
the family.

You said that you spoke Japanese until your
mother passed away. When you were young,
did all of your family speak English?

Both. Mostly English, but some Japanese.
As my mother became more proficient in
English, she used English more. So we didn’t
use very much Japanese. She was trying to
teach us to read and write in Japanese, but
we weren’t very good students, [laughter] We
always had to do it after school and after work,
so it didn’t leave much time to really do that,
because we still had to do our homework for
the regular school. I am kind of regretful now;
I wish I had paid more attention, [laughter]

Do you remember your mother’s social life at
the time?

Well, here in Reno, it was different from,
say, in the communities in California, where
you had a lot of Japanese or a lot of any race;
they all kind of stayed together. Here in Reno,
there was no Japanese community. There

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

were probably only six or seven families here
altogether. Two of them lived in Sparks, and
the rest of them in Reno. We were within a few
blocks of each other, but nobody lived very
close to each other. There were two families
next door to each other. We lived about three
blocks away, and there were two families that
had farms over here where the fairgrounds
are right now, the east end of Sutro Street.
There were two truck farms run by Japanese
families. We were kind of all over in that
section of Reno, but not real close together.

Social life was about once a month. The
adults would get together at somebody’s
house, and a lot of times the kids didn’t go;
we stayed home. Once in a while, maybe
everybody would go. In the summertime,
once or twice a year, they’d have a picnic,
and that’s the only time we ever got to see
everybody. Sometimes they’d go visit another
family. And that was socializing among the
Japanese people. There weren’t very many. So
everybody knew everybody else, but we didn’t
do a lot of getting together, because everybody
was busy doing their thing.

What about the social life in terms of being in a
small community with people of different races?

That was not a major problem. The
Japanese at that time lived in what now
was called the southeast portion of Reno.
It was predominantly Italians, a few other
Caucasians, and then the few Japanese
families. So we all got along very well.
Everybody kind of knew each other, and we
didn’t have any problems until World War II
came along. Even then, the problems were not
as great as they could have been. It wasn’t the
Italians—we didn’t have any problems with
the Italian people. We had some problems
with one German family, of all things, one
German family. They were on the same side as

the Japanese were in World War II, which was
strange, [laughter] Other than that, we were
pretty well accepted. We went to school with
kids of all races. There were very few blacks in
Reno at that time. All the way through school,
I only had two black students, two Chinese
students, and maybe half a dozen Mexicans
in school. As children we intermingled with
everybody, and we had no problems, and the
adults seemed to do well with the adults of
whoever was in the neighborhood.

See, I was born over there; I was born
in the house right across from where the
fairgrounds are right now. Then, in the spring
of 1941, we moved over to the south side of
the river, and then we were totally away from
whatever Japanese people there were. We were
in a different neighborhood, but here, again,
it was predominantly Italians and then a few
other Caucasians. Then, eventually, there was
one black family that moved in. We all got
along very well, and even the adults had no
problems; everybody visited with everyone.
The neighborhood was fairly well mixed,
racially. Maybe that’s why.

The other thing was not having whole
groups of the same race living together. Like
even the Mexican people that were here were
spread out. So you had no colonies, except the
Chinese had a community and a Joss House
right on First and Lake Street in those days.
They were the only ones who really had any
kind of a community. Everyone else was pretty
well integrated into these neighborhoods, so
the only place you didn’t find any Japanese was
in the southwest which is where the well-to-do
people lived, and it was all Caucasian people
there, but those were all of our customers, my
father’s customers.

The bulk of his business came from there,
and we took care of all these yards of all the
influential people in town. So my father was
well known to all of these people. We had no

Buddy Fujii

integration problems in those days that I can
recall, except during the war. It wasn’t as bad, I
guess, as some people had it, because we didn’t
get relocated, for one thing. There were some
incidents, but nothing that was really that bad.

What kind of community activities did you
have before World War II? Also, could you
tell me more about the incident during World
Warll?

OK. Community activities—there really
weren’t many. Everybody kind of did their
own thing. As far as I know, most of the
Japanese didn’t belong to any fraternal groups;
they weren’t allowed to. There were two laws
that affected the Japanese: one was against
mixed marriages, and the other was that the
Orientals could not own property before
the war. Those were the worst two. There
were some unwritten regulations, you might
say, in some of these fraternal groups. They,
especially, did not allow people other than the
white race to belong, whether it was a service
club or the Elks or any of those. They just kind
of had unwritten rules. So it wasn’t until after
the war, when some of these things changed,
that the Japanese were allowed to join some
of these organizations. As far as I can recall,
nobody belonged to any social groups. Let’s
see, in the summer they used to have our
annual picnic get together. Then the Japanese-
American Citizenship League started in 1946,
and they kind of pulled everybody together on
an annual picnic and then a couple of other
events through the year. That was primarily
most of the social get-together, except for
family groups that would want to do that, or
friends.

We used to go to ball games, and then we
participated in sports of some kind. When I
was coming up through school I would go to
the social events. There was nothing against

me going, but it wasn’t always easy to get a
date, either. There were no Japanese girls my
age here. I was in-between. I was one of the
younger Nisei. The other ones all served in
World War II, but I was too young, and with
very few families here, there were hardly any
girls here. My sister was the only one, and the
other families that had girls were all older, all
my sister’s age. They were older, so that was
that.

I never thought of myself as being
Japanese when I grew up, because I grew
up here. Except for World War II, it never
dawned on me that I was different. Even when
I looked in the mirror and combed my hair, I
never thought I looked any different. I didn’t
think about that, because it wasn’t an issue
with the kids—the kids that we ran around
with and went to school with. And during
World War II it wasn’t. It became apparent,
but it was not a real stumbling block as far
as that’s concerned. It was another obstacle
you had to overcome. It was just like going to
school and passing courses and doing things
that your parents wanted you to do.

Socially, it was a different era from the
years that you are growing up in. The kids
didn’t mature as early. So girls were not
important until you probably became a
senior in high school, or maybe even going
to college. There were other things. You had
to work, and then there was always sports
and hunting and fishing, other activities that
were more important than girls. It just wasn’t
a major issue like it is today. Today, a lot of the
younger kids in middle school even, eleven,
twelve, it’s important to have contact with the
opposite sex. In our day, it wasn’t that big an
issue. Kids dated and so on, but you’re always
going to have some that that was an important
issue. For the bulk, I would say, it really wasn’t
until maybe when you became a senior. Then
I went to college. Then, all of a sudden, the

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

social life became a focal point in college. Up
until then, there were too many other things
to do that occupied the time. Also, my parents
didn’t encourage that; they had never attended
any functions and so on.

It wasn’t until my youngest brother came
along that some of these things became
important. With my dad, it was always, “You
have to work, work, work.”

So when my youngest brother got to high
school, my other brother and I got together
and went to my dad and said, “Somebody in
this family has to have a chance to do some
of these things, and he is bigger than we are,
so he should get a chance to play football and
basketball and so on.”

“So that’s fine,” my dad said. “OK.”

We said, “We’ll do all the work, if you let
him participate.”

So he said, “OK. We can do that, but
two requisites: one, he has to maintain a B
average.”

I said, “Well, that shouldn’t be any
problem.”

“And the other one is that he has to make
first string. You know, he has to be on our first
team.”

“Well, OK.” [laughter]

So, fortunately, he did both. We could
keep after him for his grades, and then he
was talented enough to do that, and he went
on in high school to become All-State and
become All-Star, and then when he went
to the university, he made All-American,
so he was talented enough to do that. I’m
glad he had the chance to do that. Then, he
subsequently went on to a very successful
career as a teacher and a coach. So it was
something that my other brother and I could
say, “Well, yes, we got him started that way.”
But he had a lot of talent, and it was kind
of a shame to waste that. As he came along,
he became more socially active, because he

didn’t have to work like we did. So his life was
different from ours in that respect.

How much older than your brothers are you?

Well, my brother George is two years
younger than me, and then Ken is two years
younger than George, so he’s four years
younger than me, but I’m glad he had the
chance, because it was an opportunity for
somebody in the Japanese race. Before him
there was one other. In those days, Reno High
School was the only high school here, and in
Sparks they had a high school, and then the
Catholic school was Bishop Manogue. Those
were the only high schools. There were no
other high schools in those days. When I
went to school there was a Tarenishi family,
and one of their boys was a basketball player,
and there was another family here, and one
of their boys was a football player, but he was
never big. They did well, but they didn’t attain
the status my brother achieved in athletics.
He was bigger than either one of those two
fellows. Most boys want to become athletes,
star athletes, but most of us are never going to
make that. Anyway, that’s how things evolved,
as far as most of the social life.

There were incidents in World War II.
There’s one I remember. There were two
brothers, when I was in grammar school, that
I always had to fight every day, or run home
every day, because there was always two of
them against me, and they were both a little
bigger than me. If there’d only been one, I
might have been able to do something, but
with two, I could never beat both of them.
So I used to come home crying, because I got
beat up. My father would always say, “That’s
OK. You need to do what you do. Well, use an
equalizer. Get a two by four or something.”

And I said, “Well, I can’t do that.” So I
fought them for a long time. If I could get a

Buddy Fujii

head start, I could outrun them, if I could get
away. They didn’t live where I lived, so they
never chased me too far.

When I got to junior high school, I was
accepted by the inner group of students that
seemed to be the big social group, as well as
the athletes. When they found out that these
brothers were still harassing me, one day after
school there were about fifteen of them. They
caught these two brothers, and I never heard
from those two brothers again. I never asked
what happened. All I know is, I never got
bothered by those guys again, and I was well
treated by all the students in the school, and
most of the teachers.

In our neighborhood, there was this one
German family; they would throw rocks
over at the house. They broke a window, and
they’d go by and throw all kinds of things
at the house, and they’d paint things on the
sidewalk. We knew it was them, but nobody
else was doing this kind of stuff.

The only other bad thing about World War
II was that, right after it broke out, the sheriff
came and took my father to jail, and they kept
him there for about three months. I remember
going to visit him in jail, and I couldn’t
understand why he was in jail, because I knew
he hadn’t done anything. They also took a lot
of the other heads of households, but most of
them didn’t get detained. They were taken in.

The FBI came to the house every week and
looked through the house every week. We got
to know them pretty well. They got to know
how we were doing in school and everything,
because they could see the papers [our tests
and homework]. They were always looking
for hidden radios, and we had the old Philco
radio, like most families did, and that’s all we
had. So it wasn’t a two-way radio or anything.
However, my father had firearms, because he
liked to hunt, so they took all his guns away,
and that may have been one reason why they

arrested him, but I guess they just thought
he was a spy. [laughter] Anyway, those were
some of the worst things that happened.

There were a lot of things said from time
to time, if you went downtown and went to the
store. Even at school, a couple of the students
would say something, but most of them didn’t
say anything. It was not a major issue. A couple
of the teachers, maybe initially, treated me a
little differently—nothing real bad, but I’ve
had a couple of them tell me, years and years
later, that they didn’t like me when the war first
broke out, just because I was Japanese. They
thought I was going to be the enemy.

One of the things my father impressed
upon us was that you must do well in school,
I think. Most Niseis told their kids, “You must
do well in school; you must get the education,
or you cannot succeed in this country.” So my
sister was a straight-A student, which made
it hard for me, because I couldn’t match her.
I was not an A-plus student. I was a B-plus
student. She only brought home one B all
the way through school. I remember my dad
really got after her about that. I was allowed to
bring home more than one B. I was a B-plus,
A-minus student, but I had to work hard to
do that. I think the teachers respected that,
because, as I said, a couple of them in later
years told me that they respected me, because
I was such a good student and never created a
problem in class—good student scholastically
and otherwise.

When I was in seventh grade in junior
high school (junior high was seventh,
eighth, and ninth grades), I won the spelling
championship. I beat everybody in the school.
I remember the word I won on was “dessert.”
There was this ninth grade girl that missed
“dessert,” and when she missed it, I knew I
had it, because I knew how to spell dessert,
[laughter] That was, maybe, the crowning
achievement of my junior-high-school days.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

But those are the kinds of things I
remember. Like I just knew I had to do well
and not create any problems in class. I had
some good teachers there. So I worked hard
there, and I think that changed some of their
attitudes about the Japanese-Americans. They
said it certainly changed theirs about any of
the minorities, primarily, but the Orientals,
because there was another Chinese fellow in
class that was absolutely brilliant. He later
went on to become a nuclear physicist, and
he was kind of my ideal. He always was a
straight-A student, but he was a regular guy.
His family had a restaurant here, and they all
worked in the restaurant. It was just like our
family; we all worked at the nursery. So we
were kind of the same, and we got along very
well, and yet, you know, the Chinese and the
Japanese normally didn’t get along that well.
But we did, and their family and our family
got along. We used to go there and eat about
once a month. It taught me how to get along
with people.

I think the war helped me more than it
helped some other people, because it taught
me more tolerance than I think I might
otherwise have had. I knew that everybody in
California was relocated, and you know some
of the friends of the family got relocated. I
was expecting us to be gone someplace, too,
but it didn’t happen, and that was fortunate
for us, I think. My dad might have been kind
of hard-headed. He’s very—oh what do I
say? Individualistic. He’s always made his
own way. He left Japan when he was about
thirteen years old, and made his own way
to the United States, and he’s always kind of
done things the way he wanted to do them,
so he wouldn’t have liked being pulled up and
put in a camp, and he didn’t like being put in
jail, but after he got out, he didn’t break any
laws. Well, one time he did. He borrowed a
shotgun, and he went duck hunting. And he

got caught, [laughter] But that’s how much he
liked to go hunting, and he kind of instilled
that in us boys, so we go hunting and fishing
and outdoors and so on.

One of the things I didn’t tell you about
my father was that during the Depression
he worked in a CCC Camp, a Civilian
Conservation Corps Camp. They put
windmills in across all of northern Nevada
and part of northern California, as part of
this government project—windmills, so that
there would be water for cattle and the game.
He was the cook on this crew that went across
most of northern Nevada. That’s how he got
to know all of that country and where to go
hunting and so on. That’s what he did, you
know, during the Depression when there
really wasn’t anything else to do. He went to
work for the government doing that. He was
also a cook. He was a good enough cook to be
a chef someplace probably, but I don’t know
where he picked up the skill. He never talked
about it.

During the Depression did he do his gardening
job?

Gardening? There was no money to do
that. You had to spend money on that, so
he went to work for the government on this
government project with the Conservation
Corps.

Where did he get the job as a labor worker ?

I couldn’t tell you. Probably, I think,
people were taking anything they could get
in those days.

Tell me about your education.

Well, I went to school in Reno, two
different grammar schools, because we

Buddy Fujii

moved, and then junior high school, and
then Reno High School, and every school
that I went to is gone now. The buildings are
all gone. They’ve done something else there.
I went to the University of Nevada, got a
scholarship to go to the University of Nevada,
thanks to one of my teachers. I was going to
go anyway, but she said, “No, your grades are
good enough and everything that you could
get a scholarship. It is kind of late,” she said,
“but we’ll apply.” Luckily, I was able to get a
scholarship to go.

I started out in the College of Agriculture
to get a degree in horticulture, which was the
closest thing to the nursery business. Well, as
a sophomore, I was the only student in the
entire curriculum, so they dropped it, and I
had to change majors and colleges. I lost most
of those credits I already had accumulated.
They didn’t count when I went to the College
of Arts and Science. So I then went and got
the degree in botany, and it took me six
years, because I lost those first two years. So
I had to start all over, [laughter] I did get my
degree, a bachelor of science. I wanted to go
back and get a master’s. Originally, I wanted
to become a college professor and teach, but
then I had to go back, and my mother passed
away when I was a sophomore in college, and
that’s another reason it took me six years. I
didn’t take a full load every semester, so that I
could work, and eventually, after I graduated,
I went back to the nursery full time, so I never
went back to school. Then my brother left
there and branched out and came to work for
accounting. It was almost twenty-five years
ago. But all my education has been here in
the local school system.

The University of Nevada was the only
system of higher education in the state at that
time. There was no Las Vegas, so everybody
came to school here, and it was a small
school, and you knew almost everybody

here. People came from all over the state, and
really all over the country. I went to school
with people from Massachusetts and some
from down South and upper Midwest and all
over the West Coast. So I got to know quite
a few.

Also, at that time, we had GI’s coming
back from Korea, and there again, I lucked
out. I was taking ROTC, because I thought if
I went in the military, I’d want to go in as an
officer, rather than as an enlisted man, but,
here again, when I was a sophomore, I got
polio, so I had to drop out, and once I did
that I got a draft notice. When I went down
to take the physical I was 4-F, so I didn’t
pass. So I didn’t have to go into the military,
which is a disappointment for a young man of
nineteen years of age, because everybody else
was going. The big thing to do is to go with
everybody—all your friends. I was able to
complete my education, but while I was home,
these people were coming back from Korea.
The GI’s were older people with families, and
I got to meet them, and they really stimulated
me to continue my education. I was getting
kind of burned out there, because of having
to start over. It was kind of wearing me
down, but when I saw married people going
to class, supporting families and working
and everything else, I thought, if they can do
that, I can go to school. In talking to them,
too, and making friends with those people, I
learned that over there (in Korea) they saw
their friends die, and things like this. They
said nothing was more important than living,
but once you got through that, then education
became important, because you couldn’t
succeed without it. With the government
paying the GI Bill, why, they were going to
take advantage of it.

After your mother died, did your father
continue his business?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Yes, he kept the business going. I had to
cut down on my load in school, so I could
help, but I still went to school, and I worked,
and my brother got out of high school, so
he was home to help. Then he went into the
military—he was drafted—so he was gone
for two years. Then my younger brother was
still home, so we kept the business going,
and it was just one of those things, where
everybody shares everything. I became kind
of the chief cook and bottle washer. My dad
did some of the cooking; I did some of the
cooking, and I did most of the housework. I
got my brothers to help clean the house. I did
the washing and the ironing. I learned how
to do that, [laughter] I learned how to keep
house. I didn’t think it was very good then,
but it was an invaluable experience after I got
married. I knew how to do housework and
how important it is and what a drudgery it
can be sometimes, if you have to do all of it.

So I kept the business going. In fact,
the business grew, because everything just
grew. Reno was growing, and there were
other businesses starting up at that time, but
because we were here, and we had a well-
established name, we had a lot of business,
more than we could handle. It just kind of
grew up, and we did well. My father did well,
[laughter] We weren’t getting very much out
of it, because he wasn’t paying us that much,
but he was doing well, and after I got out of
school and came back full time, why, we went
along pretty well for a while, but he didn’t
want to change the deal of the old school.
He didn’t want to change the way operations
went, and he had to change, or he couldn’t
keep up. There were a lot of changes occurring
in the business itself, and I could see that we
could not support three families in there the
way he was operating it. So my brother and
I had a long discussion, and we decided we
would leave, because there was enough for

him, with the hired help, that he could do
well. So we left, and he stayed in there until
he was eighty years of age and finally retired
at eighty. He did pretty well just selling retail
there, and not doing any more landscaping.
The opportunity was there, I think, to have a
tremendous business, but it didn’t work out.

When we left we talked about, well, maybe
we should go into business, but we didn’t want
to compete with him, and he wouldn’t have
looked at it right. It would have been like we
were trying to cut his throat type of thing;
we were in competition. So we didn’t want to
do that, and so for a year I went to work for
a friend of mine who was an engineer, and I
worked on a survey crew. Then I came to work
for the county.

If you look back at the business, those
people that were in business then, everyone
of them got real big, did very well, because the
town just mushroomed, and so there was a
lot of need for nursery and landscaping—and
gardening, for that matter. Now there are a
lot of gardeners here, so all those businesses
did very well. That’s the way it is, but then
I wouldn’t be where I am today, either,
[laughter] Who knows what I would have
been doing?

I’ve been here for almost twenty-five years
and have kind of come up through the ranks
to become the head of the department and
become part of the county’s management
team. So I am doing things that impact
the entire community now, more so than I
would have been, had I stayed in business.
It’s kind of rewarding to work here and to
work in government. I know we have a lot of
shortcomings. There’s a lot of improvements
that have to be made, but there are also a lot of
good things going on. Mostly, you don’t read
about those in the papers or on television.
They never tell you about those good things.
Good things are not news, [laughter]

Buddy Fujii

So that’s the way things have happened
here. I think it’s all been for very good, because
all of us have done reasonably well, and I think
most of the Japanese in this community have
done very well. They all have a very good
reputation here of being very productive, very
ambitious, and people who can get things
done. You never have to worry about them.
Give them an assignment to do, and they are
going to get the job done, and I think that’s just
the reputation of the Japanese people: they are
hard-working and honest and ambitious, and
they will always give you what you need or
what you want. So I’ve tried not to diminish
that reputation at all.

My father had a good name here, and I
want to make sure that his name stays real
well. He was well known, well respected in the
community. All of his friends are gone. Most
of the influential people that knew him are
gone, or they’ve all passed on. He’s outlived
them all. Independent as he is, you know
he’s very cantankerous now, like old people
get. [laughter] And he doesn’t want to talk to
anybody.

So he’s alone at his house?

Yes. My nephew stays with him.

Your wife is Japanese?

No. My wife is a Caucasian.

So when you reached the age to get married
that law against interracial marriage was no
longer in force?

No, that law had been repealed back in
about 1958, so it was not illegal to have an
interracial marriage, and so I got married in
1960. All these years, I’d been going to school
and working, so when I finally graduated from

college, I didn’t want to get married right
away. There were too many other things that
I wanted do. So for two or three years I did
some of the things I had always wanted to do. I
traveled around, and I still worked, but I went
to some of these different places, and just did
a few things that I thought you could not do
once you got married. I really wasn’t ready to
get married when I got married, [laughter] It
was one of those things that happens, and all
my life I dated Caucasian girls; there were no
Japanese girls.

When I went to the University of Nevada,
there was one Japanese girl there from Fallon.
She was a senior, and I was a freshman. Well,
a senior can’t go with a freshman, [laughter]
We became good friends, and she’s a beautiful
girl from a really nice family in Fallon, and
we knew the family. But there just weren’t any
Japanese girls around. I just always dated and
ran around with Caucasian girls—just one of
those things.

So when I was about twenty-one, I was
still in college. “Gee, I better go and see if I can
find any Japanese girls.” My sister was living
in Sacramento, so I would go down there
and stay with her, and I’d run around in the
Japanese community and try to meet Japanese
girls. I met quite a few of them through there
and through the Japanese-American Citizen
League, but I never really met any I wanted
to marry, [laughter] They thought differently
from me.

Well, even a lot of people that lived in
the Japanese communities had a feeling of
persecution, because when you live in a group,
people can see you, and they see you as a
group, and tend to tabulate everybody as the
same. So a lot of them felt persecuted. Most
of us that lived here never had those feelings,
because we were accepted here. They didn’t
feel like they were accepted. So when they’d be
talking about prejudice and discrimination,

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

that was real for them. We didn’t have that
here. I don’t know what you faced here, but
I think even people that were coming from
Japan didn’t feel it here. In Sacramento they
did, because they lived in a community,
and the same with the black and Mexican
or whatever they were, Puerto Ricans.
Everybody was prejudiced against everybody.
When you got a lot more people... now those
communities get big enough where you are
getting that here. Now, you’ve got the black
community and the Mexican community
and whatever, and there’s problems, and so
people are starting to feel prejudiced. They
are starting to discriminate against these
people, just because of the problems that are
created.

I didn’t have any of that, and so when I
dated Japanese girls, I tried to see if there was
any difference. My dad wanted me to marry
a Japanese girl, and I thought, well, being a
good son, I will see what I can do. [laughter]
But living there was different, because I was
from the outside; I didn’t get accepted, and
that was a real problem. I was dating this
girl when I met my wife. What started out as
a friendship just kind of mushroomed into
something else, and pretty soon this other
girl, who was over the mountain, tended to
become less important, [laughter]

So we got married, and we’ve been
married for thirty-two years and have two
daughters. And going on. We just keep going
from year to year, and when we reach forty
or fifty or whatever .... Good friends of
ours just celebrated their fiftieth anniversary,
so ... . My brother has been married for
thirty-three years, and my youngest brother
has been married for thirty years. So we
only picked one, and we are all married to
Caucasians.

What about your sister?

My sister married a Japanese from
Sacramento, and they moved over there,
and they have four children. Her husband
passed away here two years ago, and so she
is a widow.

Do you remember what kind of Japanese
traditions, food, activities, you had in the house
when you were young?

Clothing, we wore all American clothes.
Food, we usually had one Japanese meal a day.
Generally, at dinnertime we had a Japanese
meal. Breakfast was always an American meal,
and lunch could be sandwiches or anything.
Sometimes on a weekend my mother might
have made something for lunch, but generally,
we had about one Japanese meal; that’s all. I
still like to have the Japanese food. My wife
has gotten the same way. Like rice was bread
to me, so I still like to have rice and some of
these other dishes. I still like sashimi and some
of those things, so I try to remember some
of the things my mother used to make, and
I tried to teach my wife how to cook some
of these things, and she’s done very well. She
can make most of these things now. So we eat
a fair amount of Japanese food as a regular
part of our diet, because we are on low- fat,
low-cholesterol diet, and a lot of that food fits
right in. So it’s real good.

Culture-wise, some of the things that they
wanted to instill in us were honesty, integrity,
and their dedication to hard work. Most of the
things that are very important to the Japanese,
all those things, I think, were instilled in us
to do these: to do what’s right, to work hard,
and duty to family, although my father was
never one to do much with the family. Yet, he
still tried to instill in us that you have a sense
of family as being number one in your life,
but he never really said a lot about it. He was
very dictatorial in the way he raised the family

Buddy Fujii

himself. Everything always had to be his way,
I guess, more of the old Japanese ways.

All of our friends were from the American
families, and I could see how they did things.
I got invited to these homes a lot. When
you were at the dinner table, you’d have
discussions. Well, we didn’t do that at our
house. No talking at the table. You just came
to eat, and that’s all. If any talking were to be
done, my dad did the talking.

So I didn’t like that, when I could see what
happened in American families, and that the
father and the mother would go to activities
with the kids. Well, my dad never did that.
One, he was always busy, but still, I could see
these other people were busy, too, but they
made time to do that. And then we worked
seven days a week; these other people would
work five days or six days. They’d always take a
day off. In my family it was different—treating
your kids a little differently from the time
they were small children all the way up. So I
wanted to try to do that, because my father
was always, “Do everything just as I tell you
to do it.” And like most kids, you don’t always
agree with that, [laughter]

So with my kids I tried to do differently. I
guess it worked in most ways, because we get
along very well, and I think that’s important.
They are not as afraid of me as I was of my
father, I think, and I think my brothers or
sister feel the same way. They were just scared
to death of him. You weren’t afraid of your
mother, but you were afraid of your father. In
our system, it’s the other way around: more
afraid of the mother than the father, [laughter]
So I think that’s one of the big changes that
have occurred.

But at the same time, I tried to instill in my
kids some of the old virtues. Well, they’re not
strictly Japanese, but work hard, be honest,
treat people right. Certainly, you’re going to
have some prejudices, not only against people,

but against systems and everything else, but
you need to try to always look at both sides on
a lot of these things, so that they are aware of
that, and hopefully they will pass it along to
their children. So I think some of the Japanese
way of doing things is passed on, and you take
pride in yourself, because if you don’t have
that, you can’t accomplish a lot. So be aware of
yourself and try to make things work within
the society you’re in, as well as fit in. You don’t
have to be a sheep, and you don’t have to be
one of the flock; you can still bean individual.

There were no churches here, so, although
I know both of my parents were Buddhists,
maybe, when they came over from Japan,
they never went to church here, because
there wasn’t a church. They still don’t have
a Buddhist church here, so you were never
able to follow that religion. My sister and I
never went to Sunday school, but my brothers
went to Sunday school, different ones, but
they’ve never gone to church, either. My wife
was a Catholic, and when the children were
small, she’d take them to church, and they
were raised as Catholics, but they don’t go to
church any more, either, because they don’t
agree with everything about the Catholic
Church. We told them you just need to go,
so you can learn what it’s about, and if you
don’t like it afterwards, you don’t have to go.
They had friends who were Mormons, so they
went with their friends to their church and the
Baptist Church, so they got exposed to all the
different religions. Basically, they could see
and make up their own minds. Neither one
of the girls really goes to church as something
that they have to do. So we didn’t have a
real religious background, because my dad
really never said anything about it, but if my
brothers friends were going to go to Sunday
school, if they wanted to go, they were allowed
to go. None of my friends ever wanted to go
to Sunday school so we didn’t go. [laughter]

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

In Japan, New Year’s Day is really important,
like a big ceremony at Christmas here. Did your
family celebrate New Year’s Day?

We did that when my mother was alive.
She always made the big thing on the table, all
the different foods, and then we went visiting
all the other families, and everybody visited
everybody So I remember on New Year’s, it
was a very festive occasion. Even after my
mother died, some of the other families would
have us, so we’d would go visit them, and then
we had some friends in California, and they
would do the same thing. Some friends had
a nursery down there, and we boys used to
go down and help them in the winter times,
right around New Year’s, because we weren’t
doing anything here, but they were getting
ready down there, so I remember they would
put this big New Year’s feast on. That’s one
thing that my mother did every year when
she was alive, and when she passed away, my
dad didn’t do that anymore, and that’s the
only time that I can remember that we’d have
to have sake, [laughter] I didn’t like it when I
was a little kid, but you had to drink it.

Yes, we didn’t follow large Japanese
traditions in our house. So we did everything
like they did it here. My dad didn’t even
celebrate Christmas, either. My mother would
celebrate Christmas, because it was something
that all the kids did. [laughter] So she would
help us celebrate Christmas, although it really
wasn’t a big thing in our house, either, but it’s
a big thing in my house, because Christmas
is very important to my wife. So it’s always a
big holiday in our house—and Thanksgiving.
Most of the other things, we didn’t do a lot of
those things.

There are very few Japanese things in the
house. We had a couple of happy faces; my
dad still has those. Let’s see, we had another
picture, and my mother had a couple of

things, but that was it. We didn’t have a little
altar or anything there for religious service.
We didn’t even have any samurai swords for
a long time, or anything like that. My dad
just said we won’t have any of that stuff. I
can remember even when we were little kids
before the war, they didn’t even have a picture
of the emperor up or anything. I know a lot
of houses displayed an old Japanese flag and
a picture of the emperor, but we didn’t have
that. When the war started my mother put
up an American flag, and the FBI guys, the
first time they came, I remember they were
amazed to see an American flag in our house
instead of a Japanese flag, because they took
those things away from everybody. I think it
was a lot my dad, because he said, “We won’t
have any of that in the house.” So there wasn’t
any. I remember our mother trying to teach
us to count in Japanese, and trying to teach
us to read and write, and that’s about all we
did, not much beyond that. We didn’t talk
about anybody in the relatives in Japan, or
anywhere for that matter. It was just like we
were a family all by ourselves, and we didn’t
have anybody else.

Even on your mother’s side? She never contacted
her family?

Well, she did, but she wasn’t allowed to talk
about it. She’d write to them, and she would
get responses, but it’s all in Japanese, so I can’t
read it; nobody can read it. She passed away in
1952, and so that contact was lost, because of
not knowing who these people were, and not
being able to read anything. Nothing was kept;
my dad got rid of everything after she passed
away. We were pretty naive and dumb. If I had
known then what I know now, I would have
kept her things, but he didn’t want to keep
it, so he got rid of it all. There were some old
pictures that are still there, but I don’t know

Buddy Fujii

who they are. I don’t even know who these
people are, from Japan. Oh, maybe when my
sister-in-law finds out more stuff, we can find
who some of these people are. A lot of them
have probably passed away now, but maybe we
can find the children or something—cousins
or whatever.

Thank you very much for answering my
questions.

Well, I probably rambled on more than I
should have.

That was great.

Henry Hattori

Noriko Kunitomi: Today is September 23, 1992.
I’m interviewing Mr. Henry Hattori today at his
house in Sparks, Nevada. The interview will be
about his ancestors’decision to come to the United
States, and life in Nevada. Mr. Hattori, does the
University of Nevada Oral History Program have
your permission to make available to the public
the tapes and transcripts of this interview?

Henry Hattori: Yes, I agree.

First of all, tell me when you or your family first
came to the United States.

Well, my parents came right at the turn
of the century, but, of course, my sister and
brother and I were born here in California.

When did you arrive in Nevada?

I came to Nevada right after I finished school
in October of 1940, and I came to Yerington.

Could you tell me where in Japan your parents
came from?

From Kushu. Nagaoka.

Do you remember why your parents needed to
come to the United States?

No, they never did tell us exactly
what, except that, I guess, living was very
difficult. They were farm people, and so
it was hard in Japan. So they thought they
might come to the United States. Well, my
father first came, and then my mother came
later.

Did they marry before they came here?

Yes, they did. However, my father had
been here awhile before he went back to
Japan and married my mother and came
back here. My father was born in Nagaoka
Ken.

Do you know when he came here?

He arrived in 1900. He came to the United
States from Japan in 1900.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

What did you and your family do for living in
California and Nevada?

Well, see, when my father first came
over by himself, he worked on the railroad
in Montana. Then, after he came back with
my mother, they farmed in California near
Stockton and raised potatoes and onions.

Has your father told you what he did in railroad
work?

Well, he was just a day laborer, so no
particular job, I assume, just laying tracks and
things like that.

Did he tell about his motive or purpose, or why
he came to work on the railroad?

Well, when they first came here, of course,
he didn’t speak any English at all, and they
were, I guess, hiring a lot of Orientals to work
on the railroad—just installing the railroad,
not as conductors or engineers or anything
like that—and so he got in on that, started to
work.

What did you do for a living in Nevada?

First, I came here, and I was working in
a laundry. See, I already had my degree in
Colorado. I was brought up in Colorado, and
I was going to teach school, but when I came
to Nevada, they said, well, as long as I’m 1-A
in the draft, they can’t hire me as a teacher.
So I worked in the laundry for a while, and
then I went into the service. At that time,
you needed to serve one year, and then you
finished your obligation. So that’s what I was
going to do—finish my one year—and then I
could come back and teach in Yerington, but
the war broke out in the meantime, and I was
in the army for over four years.

So, since you were in military service, you didn’t
have to go to the [relocation] camp?

No. I didn’t. The people that were living
in Nevada did not have to go to camp, even
if they weren’t in the service. It was just
California. The border is right ten miles or
so from here.

What about your parents at the time?

Well, my parents were in Japan. My father
had become ill, and he wanted to go back to
Japan. So my mother and my brother and
sister took him back to Japan in 1939, but I was
finishing school in Colorado, so I didn’t go.

Did your parents come back to the United
States later?

Well, my mother came back, and my sister
and brother are both back. My mother died in
the 1960s. But my brother and sister are still
living.

Why did you come to Nevada?

Well, my cousin lived in Yerington. In a
way, it was supposed to be a stop on my way
to Japan. I was going to go to Japan, too, but
my brother kept writing to me not to come. He
said there was trouble brewing, so he advised
that I not go to Japan. So I stayed in Yerington
there.

So you said that your cousin was in Yerington?

Yes. My cousin was in Yerington operating
a laundry and dry cleaners.

So you helped him?

Yes, so I helped him there.

HenryHattori

Do you know why your cousin came here?

Oh, I’m not sure why he came, but most
of the people at that time were coming here,
hoping to make money They had, I suspect,
no intention of staying here permanently, but
so many of them did stay

So just like the Chinese, who came here and
made money and then went home, the Japanese
people also wanted to do that?

That’s what they wanted to do at first, but
I guess it wasn’t all that easy So in a way they
got stuck here, but I think a lot of them got
so they liked it here.

How did your parents come here? Did they
come by boat?

Oh, yes. I’m sure that was the only
transportation available at that time.

Japanese ship?

Yes, Japanese ship. They went back on a
Japanese ship, too. Yes, I saw them off in San
Francisco.

Do you know how long it took?

No, afraid not! [laughter] It must have
taken quite a while.

When your parents came over, do you know
why they chose California—to make a living
there?

Well, there were more Japanese in
California, and they had people that would
advise them what to do and so forth. They
were totally unaware of the rest of the country,
I’m sure. Of course, in 1926—I think that’s the

year—my father decided he wanted to go to
Colorado. He had heard that there was good
farming land. So he moved to Colorado. I was
six years old then. So I was actually brought
up in Colorado.

So have you worked for the railroad, or just
your father worked for the railroad?

Oh, he just worked for the railroad for,
well, a rather short time, because after my
mother came, they farmed. So ever since then,
until they went back, we worked on the farm.

So none of your family members worked for the
railroad, except for your father?

Just for a while. Yes. Day labor type.

Your father had made friends, and I’m
interested to know what kind of life, what
kind of living conditions he had while he was
working on the railroad?

He didn’t tell us, and I don’t know. I have
no idea.

I’m interested in the ways of the Japanese
Nisei and Sansei. That's a continuation with
our generation. I wonder how they were able
to adjust themselves and fit in with the small
Nevada community

Well, when I came to Nevada, what
surprised me, was that in almost every
little town in Nevada there was a Japanese
laundry and dry cleaning. Like there was in
Ely, Elko, Wells, Winnemucca, Carson City,
Gardnerville, Reno, Yerington. They all had
Japanese people operating laundries. There
were some that were farming, but outside of
that, at that time, these were the Nisei. They
were not in any other business or occupation,

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

as far as I recall. Then the Nisei, the second
generation, most of them went to school, and
after they finished school, they got out of the
laundry and dry cleaning business and went to
work just like anybody else—worked in, well,
school districts or counties. Like here, Buddy,
for instance, is the Director of General Services
for Washoe County, and George Oshima used
to be the engineer for Washoe County. Fred
Aoyama used to operate a service station.
So there was just any number of things that
people did. You know, they varied.

When I first came back to Reno, I worked
for the Internal Revenue Service, for the
federal government. From there I went to
work for the University of Nevada. That was
in 1956. Then my two boys went through
the grammar school and high school here,
and then they went through the university.
They both went to graduate school. Eugene
got his doctorate at Washington State, and
the younger one got his master’s degree at
Princeton. So you see, everybody seemed
to have different occupations. So there’s no
pattern in any way. They intermingled with
the general population like anyone else. They
had no problems.

From your story, I do not see any prejudice
or anything, but did you experience prejudice
here?

No, not greatly here. Surprisingly, out here
there was very little prejudice. Now, when I
was in San Francisco, I felt some prejudice.
See, after I got out of the army, I went back
to school in San Francisco to get my degree
in accounting, and there I did feel some
prejudice. When I went to apply for jobs and
things, I could feel the prejudice, but here in
Nevada, I certainly didn’t. So I think it was
the same for my family, my children. My wife
works now; she still works.

So what about before the World War II, like
when you were born in California, and also
when you grew up in Colorado, did you
experience prejudice?

Very little. In Colorado there were very
few Japanese families. Like in the little
farming area that we were in, I imagine there
must have been ten or twelve families, and
that’s all. So we got along very well with the
general population. As I recall, we all did well
in school, and all the Nisei children did well. I
guess some of them did go back into farming,
but I imagine most of them went into other
occupations.

I want to know more about what you can
recall about your everyday life, for example,
the relationship with your customers, or the
relationship with your mates or peers in the
military.

Well, in the military, if you’ll recall, we
had an all- Nisei unit. Well, quite a number
of officers were Caucasian, but the non¬
commissioned officers on down to the privates
and so forth were all of Japanese descent, and a
large number of them were from Hawaii. Now,
while we were in the army, there were, I’m sure,
many instances of prejudice, but you could
expect that, because we were at war with Japan.

Did you feel some weird feeling, strange feeling,
against Japan, your own country?

Well, I wasn’t familiar with Japan, you
see. We were brought up in the United States.
See, like in some of these cities, like San
Francisco or Sacramento, where they had
large Japanese populations, they would have
Japanese schools and things like that, where
they probably got indoctrinated with Japanese
ideas, but where we were so removed, we

HenryHattori

didn’t have things like that. We just went
to the regular public schools. So we didn’t
experience much Japanese culture, you know,
very little. I just don’t even recall instances of
prejudice, but I’m sure there would be. I don’t
recall my children complaining about that
while they were going to school or working
here. Of course, both did pretty well in school.
So I’m sure some people did, but I suppose it
works both ways. I don’t know what to say. If
you just carry on and act just like anyone else,
why, I would think that the prejudice would
be negligible, if any, and that’s the way most
of the people here in Nevada were, because
there were so few Japanese in Nevada, and in
Colorado, too.

Of course, up in Denver and Brighton up
that way, there were more Japanese. Before we
lived in southern Colorado; there were very
few. Now, like in Yerington, why, there were
three families, that’s all, and there was just no
problem; they didn’t encounter any problems
at all. We were able to join any organization.
My cousin was in the Rotary Club, and after
awhile he was in the VFW and the American
Legion, and like that. I’m sure, if I didn’t have
to go in the army, I would have had a job
teaching school in Yerington, but they said
they couldn’t hire 1-A people, because they
were subject to the draft.

Do they still live there down in Yerington?

In Yerington, as far as I know, there is
only one person of Japanese ancestors—just
one, who is retired. He is, let’s see, my cousin’s
wife’s brother. I met him when he was in the
Veterans Hospital here, but I haven’t been able
to find him since then. We went down there
looking for him, but we couldn’t find him.

What about food? Since you were brought
up in the United States, you could accept the

American food, but since your parents came
from Japan, did they want to cook Japanese
food?

Oh, they did. Yes. We were brought up
on Japanese food, so to speak. Of course, we
also had, in addition, more meat probably
than they have in Japan, but we always had
rice and vegetables. Well, even now, we eat a
lot of rice, [laughter]

How do they get the materials for cooking
Japanese food?

Well, they had like mail order for fish; they
used to get it from San Diego—not San Diego,
but just outside of Los Angeles. There were
stores in Denver that supplied Japanese food.
Like rice, my father would buy it ten sacks at
a time, one hundred pound sacks, [laughter]

So did your family stay in Denver or close to
Denver?

Oh, it’s quite a ways from Denver; it’s two
hundred and fifty miles southwest of Denver, a
place called Alamosa. That’s where we farmed.

Do you remember some difficulty working in
agriculture?

Well, yes. We were farming in the 1930s,
which was the Depression years here, and it
was difficult to make ends meet, but we always
managed to get along all right. We went over
there in 1926, and then shortly after that, the
Depression began, and right up to 1939, when
my parents went back to Japan, they weren’t
good years for agriculture, not the type of
farming that we did. So they were hard years,
but we always had enough to eat—but not to
accumulate any fortune. That’s what they were
there for, but that wasn’t possible.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Did your family farm just for a living and to
supply yourselves?

Yes, that’s about all we were able to do.
We were not able to save a lot of money or
anything. We were living, you know; living
was fine; we had no complaints. We all went
to school; we were all well-dressed, [laughter]
We had clothing and coats and auto-mobiles
and trucks and things like that, but not a great
deal extra. Yes, I think all Niseis were pretty
lucky that we had parents that worked so hard,
because we were so much better off than our
parents were. We’ve never had to worry about
food or clothing or anything like that. The same
way with our children. They certainly don’t
have to worry about their jobs and things.

Since you were brought up here, your native
language is English, isn’t it?

Sure.

How could you communicate with your
parents?

Oh, we did learn some Japanese, because,
like we were saying, before we went to school,
while at home we spoke in hongone only. We
didn’t know English when we were small, and
we didn’t even know how to use a knife and
fork when we were small. It wasn’t until after
we started to go to school that we picked up
all those things like that, and to learn English.
Yes, it was strange to me to have to use the
knife and fork instead of chopsticks and china,
you know, [laughter] But when you are young,
you learn quickly.

So, can you still use chopsticks?

Oh, sure, we still use chopsticks, [laughter]
We don’t use it as a regular utensil to eat dinner

or anything, but we use it a lot. Especially, for
a thing like cooking, but not when we set the
table. Then, we don’t use chopsticks.

How did you farm? Did you use plows?

Oh, yes. See, the farm that we were on
most of the time that I was growing up was
fairly large. It was three hundred and twenty
acres, which is a half section of land. So we
had tractors; we had horses, trucks, a lot of
equipment to farm that large a farm. We had
like a hundred acres of cabbage. Now that’s a
lot of cabbage, [laughter] And thirty or forty
acres of cauliflower, which is an awful lot of
work, because it’s so much handwork, and
things like lettuce and spinach and beans,
potatoes, which we had to harvest almost
solely by hand. It wasn’t very mechanized
those days, not like it is now. Also, the
farms were relatively small. Like now, you
go out to where they are raising lettuce or
cauliflower, broccoli, by the hundreds of
acres, and it’s all done mechanically. That’s
not the type of farming we did. We always
picked early in the morning and took it to
the grocery stores in town and things like
that, but most of it was shipped back East.
We loaded it into refrigerated cars, train
cars, and shipped it back East. Trucks would
come in to pick up cabbage and potatoes
and things like that.

So your father made the floor Japanese bath?

Yes. He made it, and then we’d bring
wood, build a fire underneath, and every day,
especially in the summer, we’d have to take a
bath, [laughter]

Oh that’s neat. I miss Japanese baths.

They’re nice to relax in.

HenryHattori

They make a hot, hot hath, [laughter]

Yes, it’s hot.

Did you sleep on the floor?

Oh, no, we never slept on the floor, we
always had beds with mattresses.

Your parents, too?

Yes. Even my parents.

So that big house was built special for your
family?

No, no. It was there when we moved into
that property. We leased the property to a
farm, and the house and the outbuildings like
the barn and blacksmith shop, garage, things
like that, were all there. The only thing we
built on there was houses for our laborers. We
used to hire a lot of Mexican people to do the
hand labor. Then we built cellars to store the
potatoes and things. You dig them in the fall,
and there the weather was quite severe, so you
couldn’t leave them around. You had to put
them in under cover. So we built cellars, the
kind that you could drive your truck through
and move hundreds of sacks and things like
that.

So you and your brother and sister helped with
the farming?

Yes. We helped. Of course, we never
missed a day of school because of farming.
We always were able to go to school. In the
summertime, and after school, and before
school.

So other times did you go to school and come
back and help?

Yes, after school we helped. We only had
chores to do. Like my brother and I, one of us
would have to milk the cows, and the other
one would have to feed the pigs, and we’d take
turns. One day one would feed pigs, and one
would milk the cows. So we always had milk
when we were growing up. Then there were
chickens to feed and eggs to collect and things
like that. We used to have like a hundred pigs
and maybe two cows and a dozen horses, and,
oh, I don’t know how many chickens we had.

It must have been noisy, [laughter]

Yes, they’re noisy and dirty. We ate all the
eggs.

What did you use the horses for?

The type of farming we did was row
crops, like cabbage, cauliflower. I don’t know
whether you have seen them grow or not,
but long rows, and then like that. So horses
are used to cultivate between the rows of
cauliflower, cabbage, or potatoes even, and
then to harvest. You couldn’t bring in tractors.
At that time the tractors were not as well
developed as they are now. Only they were
like Caterpillar tractors or great big things, so
we used horses and wagons. Like potatoes we
would dig with a tractor. Then, after they are
picked and sorted, then the wagon would go
around and pick up the bags of potatoes. So
we used the horses quite a bit, not like current
farming, [laughter] Nowadays, everything is
so mechanized, but it wasn’t that way when
we were farmers.

What about winter? Colorado must be really
cold?

Oh, yes, it was very cold. Beginning, oh,
the latter part of September, the first part of

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

October, like now, and from there on, it would
get cold, and if it would snow, the snow would
stay until next spring. It just wouldn’t melt. So
when wed be out milking the cows or feeding
the pigs, it could be like thirty to forty below
zero. It was very cold there. The altitude was
7,500 feet.

Oh, it was similar to Lake Tahoe?

It was higher than Lake Tahoe; even
higher than Donner Pass, and that was the
floor of the valley that we lived in. So to get
out of the valley, you’d have to go like 10,000
feet. That’s how high a valley it was, high
altitude. It was cold. In the summer time
it’s cool, too; it would be in the seventies.
Sometimes it got in the eighties, and we’d
think it was awful hot.

So what did your family do during winter?

Well, there’s always a lot of things to do
on a farm, like repairing equipment, doing
things like that. Of course, we didn’t, you
know, going to school. The days were so short
that when we’d leave in the morning it’s dark,
and when we’d get back it’s dark. So we didn’t
do anything other than our chores of feeding
the pigs and milking the cows, [laughter]

What about your sister? What about her job?
Did she help with the farming?

Well, she did some, but she was mostly
helping at home, cooking and keeping house,
but she did go out in the field at times, too.
At the peak of the cultivating and harvesting,
everybody goes out. My mother was out, my
father was out, we were all out; everybody’s
out working, and that’s the way it was with
all the Japanese families there—ten-hour
days.

Did you feel something different from American
families in terms of the gender role?

Well, the American people did not do the
vegetable farming. They were mostly in cattle
or grain or hay, which was more mechanized
than our row crops. So, in most cases, the
father would work with the hired hands, and
the mother would stay at home. So it was an
entirely different type of farming that they
did and what we did. Now, there were some
Italian families—like one of our neighbors
was Italian—and they did a lot of sugar beets
and things, and their parents all went out and
worked; all the children were out working.
Our fields were adjacent to each other.

Do you know why your father picked that
particular farming style?

Well, no. I don’t know why, but when he
was working in California—that’s before I
was born—he worked for the people that did
that type of farming, so he became acquainted
with that and learned that type of farming.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have known how
to farm. So I would suspect that’s why he
continued with that; it was the only farming
he knew.

Since your father already had the farm areas,
and you chose to be a teacher first, are there
any conflicts between those decisions?

No. My mother especially did not want
me to become a farmer. In her opinion, it was
much too hard work for what you realized,
so she wanted me to go college and become
a teacher. So that’s why I was going to college.
They had a small college in the town that was
near the place where our farm was; five miles
from our farm. So I’d ride the school bus, the
regular school bus, and go to school. There

HenryHattori

was one other Japanese student at that college,
and she was going to become a teacher, too,
but when she finished, she got married,
[laughter] She did not go into teaching. Her
husband was an accountant in Los Angeles,
so they moved to Los Angeles then.

When did you meet your wife?

That was in Yerington in 1940, 1941,
before I went into the army. See, they were
living in San Francisco, but in order to avoid
the evacuation to the camps, they came to
Nevada, and they bought a laundry in Fallon.
So they were living in Fallon when I was living
in Yerington. So that’s how I met her, and, of
course, her parents and my cousin were good
friends in San Francisco.

Did you use the railroad to come to Colorado
from San Francisco? Or did you use water to
travel?

No, we went in a car, just an ordinary car,
and we had our equipment shipped by freight,
but we didn’t have very much equipment and
furniture.

Are there any reasons why your family chose
to use the car instead of the train?

Well, there were six of us, four children.
See, at that time I had an older sister, but she
died. I suppose my mother and father thought
it would be cheaper by car than for all of us to
ride the train. I really don’t know; I was only
six years old.

Do you remember what happened on the way
to Colorado?

No, I don’t recall that. I don’t even recall
where we stopped, or anything like that. All I

remember is that it was a long ride, [laughter]
In those days the roads weren’t that good, and
the cars weren’t that good. We probably had a
few flat tires and things like that on the way.

Do you remember which car?

Yes, it was a Buick touring car. I remember
that.

So your father had a driver’s license here?

Oh, sure, if they required them in those
days, I don’t know. I don’t even know that.

Could you tell me a little bit about the high
school or junior high school days?

Well, first, in the grammar school we had
a one-room school house in the country that I
attended. Then they got a bus system to go to
town, which was only about five miles from
our house. So we all rode the bus, but we’d
have to get on the bus about seven o’clock
in the morning, which in the wintertime
seemed quite early. We rode the bus a long
time, because we were one of the first ones
they picked up. We would ride on until they
got everybody picked up and go to school.

I went to junior high and high school in
the same building there. When I was in the
seventh grade our school building burned
down, so all the children got separated into,
well, places like the Masonic Lodge. Our
classes were at the Masonic Lodge, and the
tenth grade was somewhere else, but we were
right downtown at the Masonic Lodge. That
was only for one year, less than a year. Then
the school was rebuilt, so we were able to go
back to the regular school.

My brother and I participated in sports.
My brother was a real good athlete. He was a
football player and a basketball player and a

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

track man and things like that. I participated,
too, but I wasn’t very good, [laughter]

Then, after I graduated from high school,
I received a scholarship to go to any state
university—it was a state scholarship—but we
didn’t have the resources to go out of town,
so I had to stay in Alamoso which had this
small teachers college. My graduating class
at college had thirty-seven people, so you
can see, we had a small school, but there are
some advantages to a small school. You get a
lot of individual help from the teachers. We
had classes in math, for instance, with only
six or seven students. So, it was good.

As I mentioned, I was trying to teach
there but . . . and I could have got a job; I
was offered two jobs to teach, but they didn’t
pay enough to even make ends meet. See, one
job I got offered was fifty dollars a month,
and another one was sixty dollars a month,
if I would coach athletics, but out of that you
had to pay for your room and board, and if
you did that, you didn’t have enough money.

So I decided I wouldn’t teach there. I was
fully expecting to go to Japan, because my
brother was in school there, and I was going
to learn Japanese, so I could get into some
kind of business or something, but then, that
was shortly before the war, and my brother
said definitely do not come, so I didn’t go to
Japan.

Could you tell me how much a month you lived
on at the time?

Well, not exactly, but I do recall that at fifty
dollars a month, you know, you would have
to pay room and board—this was in a small
town—of about twenty-five to thirty dollars
a month. So that would leave you, maybe,
only twenty to twenty-five dollars a month
to live off of, well, for clothing and things
like that. I didn’t think I could do that. One

of my friends, a close friend of mine, took
one of these jobs, and he didn’t last; I think
he lasted about four months, [laughter] He
said he couldn’t make it. I was quite sure I
would be in the same situation. He just retired
recently from teaching school. He taught for,
oh, something like forty years or something,
but he is still living in Denver.

Did you regret that you couldn’t really find a
job as a teacher?

No. At that time I was really interested in
teaching, but after I came out of the service I
decided that I wasn’t going to go into teaching.
That’s why I went to school in San Francisco
to become an accountant. I felt that that was
the better occupation, and I think it turned
out for the better.

What did you do at the University of Nevada?

Oh, you didn’t know? [laughter] Well, I
was the controller at UNR. The controller
has jurisdiction over all the monies that come
in. I had to account for all the receipts, the
budget, and administer the budget. We’d get
the budget, and each department would have
so much money to spend, and I would have
to watch and see that they didn’t spend more,
or that they spent the money for what it was
allocated, and things like that. At times I had
a staff as much as over a hundred employees.
That’s when I was doing Las Vegas and the
community colleges, too, but it got too big, so
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas got their
own accounting. The community colleges
went into two accounting centers—north
and south. So Las Vegas took care of the
community colleges in the south, and we took
care of the community colleges up north. I
think they still do that. So it was a responsible
position, [laughter] That’s what I did.

HenryHattori

It was a real pressure-packed type of
thing, because, as you can imagine, we were
always short of money Of course, it’s worse
now The shortage of money is worse now, but
now they have so many more people, more
personnel, to do these things than when I was
the controller. We had very few people and
very few of the higher-educated people and
degree people. We had very few. Now they
have a lot. They’ve got more administrators
than we had, many more administrators. You
see, that’s twelve years ago. I left twelve years
ago.

Did you just want to retire?

Yes, I decided I had better retire, because
it was getting too much. I couldn’t handle it.
I always asked for personnel to help do these
thing. You don’t get the personnel, and then
you get criticized for your shortcomings, but
you can’t handle it. You just can’t do everything
with the people we had. And then becoming
computerized, too—we were always on the
very end. We got what was leftover as far as
computing was concerned. Now they’ve got
computers on people’s desks and things. We
didn’t have; we had to fight for two o’clock in
the morning, [laughter]

Things have changed drastically. Of
course, automation has really made a big
difference in things like accounting and
registration and things. When I first started
there, we used to register the students on
what we called railroad tickets with a long
paper about this wide, and they’d fill in the
classes they’d want, and along like that. I
don’t recall now how many students we had
those days; I imagine only about four or five
thousand students, but we’d all turn that into
what they have now where it’s computerized.
Computers made a big difference. We didn’t
have anything on computer when I went

to work there. They would always have
computing as more of an educational and
research tool than business. We always had
to make do with what was leftover time and
things like that. It was always annoying to
me, because I’d go to the meetings, and I’d
visit schools like, oh, Colorado, Wyoming,
Utah, Stanford, Cal, and they’d have such
good computer service, and we couldn’t get
it.

I was glad to get out. [laughter] I was
getting ulcers, and my stomach was giving
me problems, and I was getting headaches.
Amazingly, as soon as I retired, the headaches
disappeared. I haven’t taken any aspirin
anymore, and my stomach was much better.
I was glad to retire.

Health is important.

Oh, yes.

I want to know more details about your living
arrangements when you lived in Colorado?

Oh, the living areas? As I mentioned,
we had a large house. My wife and I and the
children all slept upstairs; it was a two-story
building. My parents slept downstairs. There
was a kitchen and another room next to the
kitchen, which was sort of the pantry, and
then there was the living room. Then they
had a parlor. The living room and parlor
were two separate rooms. Then there was
two bedrooms down below; my mother and
father slept in one, and there was a guest
bedroom. So there was ample space in our
house. Then my father built this floor, just
sort of an addition to the house on the side,
but it had an entry from in the house and also
from the outside.

Did you use tables and chairs?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Oh, yes, we never did have anything on the
floor. No, we had the regular kitchen table and
the stove. It was a great big old thing which
had water reservoirs and things for hot water.
Our running water had no hot water; it was
just cold water. So if you wanted hot water,
you’d have to go to the stove and either heat
it on top or take it out of the reservoirs that
were on the end of the stove which had these
pipes running through it. As you cooked and
things it heated the water in the reservoirs. We
used wood and coal. We didn’t have gas.

For a long time, for light, we had only
kerosene lamps and gasoline lamps. Then,
later on we got a light plant, but we did
not have power from the Sierra Pacific or
anything like that, [laughter] We had a
generator, and we made our own electricity.
We put generators enough for lighting, not
for cooking. Of course, we ran a radio off of
it, but that was all.

What about the clothing? Especially your
parents, did they use kimono?

Oh, no. They never did—just regular
Western wear.

Long skirts?

Never used kimonos or zotee. [laughter]

Your mother changed the hair style to Western
style, too?

Well, no. She always had long hair.
Everything with my mother was half and
half sort of. She understood English fairly
well, but she didn’t speak well. She didn’t read
English; my father could read English, and he
understood better, but he couldn’t speak too
well, either. Like his education in Japan was
only about the third or fourth grade, and I

don’t remember if my mother even went to
school in Japan, but she read Japanese—the
newspapers and magazines we always had.

There is usually a kind of conflict between the
first generation and the second generation,
because of cultural change and also language
change. Do you recall some conflicts between
your parents and you and your brothers and
sister?

No. Well, after a while going to college,
things were a little different. We weren’t old
enough to know better, [laughter] We always
had access to our cars. That’s one thing we
always had. So school affairs I always went
to. When I was in high school I was president
of my class, and we’d have functions and
meetings and things that I always could
attend, and then we’d always have these
football and basketball games that we’d always
go to. Our parents never objected to our
attending things like that.

Were they Buddhist?

Yes. We were all brought up as Buddhists.
We had a church there in the community. And
I don’t recall now how many members we
had, but all the Japanese in that community
belonged to the church.

The Buddhist church?

The Buddhist church, yes. The minister
would come from Denver once a month
or so, and those other Sundays, my uncle
would take the part of the minister. We would
have church when we were not busy. In the
summertime when we had to work on the
farm, the church was closed. We’d only have
church in the fall and winter, when we’d have
time.

HenryHattori

You had an uncle there. Did all your relatives
come?

Well, it was just that one uncle. We did
have another uncle come just for a short while,
but he didn’t stay long. He just came, worked
around the farm for a while, and then left; but
this one uncle, my mother’s brother, stayed on,
and he farmed on his own. He died a few years
ago in Denver. His wife is still living. About
three or four years ago we had a reunion at
the church that we used to go to. I have a tape
on that, a video tape. If you would like to see
the tape, I can let you use it. You can take it
and look at it.

Interesting, yes.

I don’t know what else I had on that.
It was about a two or three-day reunion. I
left before the war, and during the war, due
to the evacuation and things, a lot of other
people came into that area so the church
membership became much larger. Over
half of the people that were at the reunion I
didn’t know, because I had never met them
before—they came in after I left. But the old
people, the original group, most of those
people came.

Are you still Buddhist?

Yes, I am. My wife is Catholic. But to say
that I’m Buddhist is just that I haven’t taken
up any other religion. There is no Buddhist
church here, and I don’t attend church
anywhere.

Do you follow the Japanese way of ancestor
worship?

Yes. You know religion hasn’t played much
of a part in our lives.

What about your son, Gene Hattori? Is he a
Buddhist?

No, he’s a Catholic. See, when we got
married one of the provisions was that the
children be Catholics. My wife was a Catholic,
so both of our children are Catholics.

Does your wife go to church on Sunday?

She doesn’t go to church on Sunday,
[laughter] When the children were young
they would attend certain church functions,
but now that they are gone, I don’t think
Eugene goes to church now, and I doubt if
Jim does, because he’s always out, and he’s
so engrossed in bicycling and sailing and
things like that that I’m sure he doesn’t go
to church.

Do you still have a kind of family relationship
in Japan?

Well, we must have, but we’re not in
contact. When my wife and I visited in Japan
we did go to Nagaoka, and I tried to find some
of my relatives, but I couldn’t; I was unable
to locate them. My brother told me there’s
no point in that, because, he said, they don’t
speak English, and I don’t speak Japanese
well enough to communicate with them. So
it would be just hopeless, [laughter] I did try,
though, to find them, but we couldn’t.

You said that your father can read English and
speak English quite a bit, and that your mother
understood English, but didn’t speak English
very well?

That’s right. She didn’t read any, either.

Do you know when and how they learned
English?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

No, I don’t. It had to be on their own,
because I am sure they did not attend any
formal schooling of any kind, just learned as
they went along. So it would be very minimal
to say the least. It always amazes me that they
got along as well as they did, with the amount
of English they were able to speak and read.
It really does amaze me that they were able to
do the things that they did.

Did you help them, too, whenever they had to
ship farming crops back East? Of course, they
had to use English to do business. Did you help
them, or could they do that?

Oh, no. You see, what they had was what
they called a packing shed where all the
members—sometimes there would be an
association—would bring their vegetables to
the shed, and then they would have someone
there that was fluent in English, and that
would take care of that. They would sell it and
pay the farmers for their produce. When we
were in Colorado just a few years ago, one of
the ladies, one of our contemporaries, was in
that business. She had worked in the packing
shed for, I don’t know, some thirty or forty
years. But you see, there are people like that,
that would take in your produce and sell it
for you. So they didn’t have to actually sell
to places in Chicago or New York; they had
people there that would do that for them, but
like with truckers, we had to sell, ourselves.
We would negotiate prices with them.

When your parents came by ship to the United
States from Japan, were there a lot of people in
the same type of situation?

Oh, yes. I’m sure there were. I don’t know
from personal experience, but I am sure there
were numbers of people on the same ship—
they were all Japanese ships. Something Maru.

And they spread out?

They came and just spread out all over the
West Coast.

Since your parents came, and one uncle and
your cousins came here, what about other
relatives? Do you have any other relatives of
your parents here?

No, I don’t think so. In fact these uncles
and cousins that came were all on my mother’s
side, none on my father’s side. Did you see that
movie Come See the Paradise ?

No.

You didn’t? You should see that, [laughter]

Is it a Japanese immigrants story?

Yes, it is a story about Japanese immigrants
and evacuation. Also, there’s a movie where
the Chinese women were sold into slavery
type of thing, A Thousand Pieces of Gold.
You ought to see that movie. It’s very good. I
might have a copy of Come See the Paradise.
I don’t remember if I made a copy of that or
not. Well, anyway, I’ll get you the video. Let’s
see, I was going to get you the video on the
reunion, wasn’t I?

OK. Yes.

Roy Nishiguchi

Noriko Kunitomi: I am interviewing Mr. Roy
Nishiguchi today, November 13, 1992, at his
house in Reno, Nevada, Mr. Nishiguchi, does
the Oral History Program of the University
of Nevada have your permission to make
available to the public the tapes and the
transcripts of the oral history interviews that
we are about to begin today?

Roy Nishiguchi: Granted. I grant the
University of Nevada all rights to whatever I
might disclose to you now.

What part of Japan did your parents come
from?

RN: My dad, I know for sure, came from
Wakayama Ken, and my mother from Osaka.

Do you know why they had to leave Japan?

RN: Well, my dad came over here at the
young age of fifteen in 1905. He told me that
he lied about his age, because he had to go
out and seek his fortunes elsewhere, because

he had lost his dad out in the ocean. His dad
was a fisherman, and he lost his dad, so he had
only two sisters and one younger brother. So
he signed up with a group of people that were
coming over here to work, and that’s how he
happened to come over here. My mother came
over as the result of this so-called Baishakunin
Program (Go-Betweens) they had. That’s how
she came over.

Do you know when your mother came to this
country?

RN: I don’t know exactly, but I think it
was 1913 when my mother came to America.
My dad had told me that he was in charge of
a crew of laborers, section railroad laborers,
who laid the track for Western Pacific
Railroad from Oakland to Salt Lake City. He
told me that they passed through Gerlach,
north of here, in 1906. He arrived in America
in 1905.

So he came here without knowing how to work
in the railroad company?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

RN: Right. He signed up. You probably
were aware of the fact that at that time they
were looking for laborers over here, cheap
laborers, and so naturally they had labor
contractors, just like they do now. They had
contractors go over to Japan and get as many
people as they could that were willing to come
over.

This is the first time I’ve heard that some of the
Japanese people living in Nevada worked in a
railroad company. Other people just said in
laundry and dry cleaning; some people said just
carpenters or small business. None of them or
their relatives worked for a railroad company.
So I wonder how your father ended up with
that particular work?

RN: Well, he was young. He told me that
he was pretty young. He said he was fifteen
and had lied about his age to get over here.
He said he was with a group of fellows, and
he went along with them wherever they went,
and they ended up working on the railroad.
He said he worked as a laborer, and then,
eventually, someone took a liking to him.
One of the foremen took a liking to him, and
my dad became this white American fellow’s
assistant, because my dad was more outward
in his behavior and everything than the others
were, I guess, because of his youth. This fellow
took a liking to him and asked him to assist
him in getting crews assembled. In other
words, he was the go-between. So he told
me that, fortunately, because of that, he was
always handling men, supervising men, rather
than doing the actual work himself. He did it
at first, but then when he was selected by this
fellow to help him out, why, his work became
easier, and that’s how it happened that he got
on the crew that was working to lay Western
Pacific Railroad tracks across the country
from California to Utah.

Did he come to California first?

RN: I can’t recall if it was California or
Seattle, Washington. I can’t recall which of
those two places he came to. I don’t know
where his boat docked. That’s something
that I don’t know. He never mentioned it to
me. All he told me was about his arrival here
and how lost he was; he couldn’t speak the
language, and he talked about how he wished
that he knew how to speak the language, so
that he could express his feelings, and so that
others would be able to realize what kind of
a person he is. Other than that, I don’t know
how it came about.

Has your mother told you what kind of job she
had in Japan before she came here?

RN: Oh, yes, my mother came from a
fairly well-to-do family. She told me that
her mother and her dad were involved in
the manufacture of silk. Could that be? I
don’t know, but she told me a silk factory.
Also, she said that she taught school over
there—she was a school teacher—and that
the way she happened to come over here was
that everyone seemed to be doing it. They
were coming over here as brides for men
they hadn’t ever seen, but she said that she
visited my dad’s people in Wakayamaken.
I don’t know just what town it was, but she
told me that she and her mother and her
dad went to visit my dad’s people, and I
guess, through this meeting, she decided to
come over here as his bride. He had been
over here for several years then. So she
came over here when she was twenty years
old. So my dad had to have been over here
several years, because he came over in 1905,
and he is what—maybe ten years older than
mom? He was about ten years older than my
mother.

Roy Nishiguchi

Elizabeth Nishiguchi (Mrs. Roy
Nishiguchi): Your mother was how old when
she passed away?

RN: She was seventy-six.

EN: Seventy-six, and your dad lived to be
ninety-seven. So figure the difference there.

RN: Yes, there was about ten years
difference. So she came over here at twenty,
and he must have been thirty.

It’s interesting. I wonder why your father had
at least ten years in this country before he got
a bride from Japan? By that time, he probably
could speak English pretty well, but he did
nothing to get married over here?

RN: My mother told me this. She said
that when she came over here that she had
the feeling that my dad was always real
friendly with these Caucasian women. She
says he got along with them real well, and she
said sometimes she feared that he might get
involved with them. She talked with us kids
one day and said that, “Well, I shouldn’t hold
it against him, because he was over here all
those years, and he must have known some
Caucasian women.” So she accepted that as
something natural. She didn’t believe in it,
but she accepted it. [laughter] But after they
were married, why, then there was no one else
involved, because my mother was a beautiful
woman. I saw pictures of her when she was
a young lady. My sisters have pictures of my
mother when she first came over here.

My dad wasn’t too shabby in appearance,
either. He was one of these fellows that had a
lot of get-up-and-go. He had a lot of guts. If
he wanted to tell somebody no, he would tell
them no, regardless of how they felt about it. I
mean, he was really outspoken. He didn’t take

to being shoved around by anybody—very
strong that way. Another thing, too, he was
a very determined person. You know, when
he passed away, he was still writing poetry,
Japanese poetry, and he’d translate. Of course,
his translation wasn’t very good, because he
didn’t have any formal education in English,
and he had very little education over in Japan.
You might say he was a self-educated man. He
was reading all the time. He had dictionaries,
and to the day he died he was getting these
thick magazines from Japan. Of course, he
didn’t get them during the war years, but
he would always get those, and he would
read them, and finally he took up writing
poetry, and he entered them in California
competitions. One year around 1946 or 1947,
I recall, he was invited to attend a festival they
had there. It was a music festival—he loved to
sing, too.

EN: He could play one of those flutes that
he made himself.

RN: Oh, yes.

EN: This is their fiftieth wedding
anniversary.

RN: Yes, they were pretty old then.

EN: What was it about your dad and how
he became a citizen? How he studied and
knew all these answers?

RN: He knew American government
better than I did.

EN: Yes, that’s what I’m trying to say.

RN: He knew American government
better than I did. Now, when I was going to
the university, when I was studying for certain

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

exams in civil government, in civics, I would
have to ask him at times, to assure myself
that I had the right things in my mind, and
he had all the answers. He knew the names of
people who were filling the executive branch,
the legislative branch; he knew them all. And
the judicial, he knew all the justices of the
Supreme Court.

So when he was permitted to apply for
his citizenship the judge here told him, “It’s
amazing,” because he passed the thing; he
answered all the questions and talked to him
knowledgeably, because he did know. He was
really up on it. He would study all the time.
The judge told him, “It’s amazing you passed
that without any problems.” He told him, “You
are the first that has gone through this thing
easily with no problems.”

He was proud of that, because he always
talked about wanting to become a citizen of
this country. He said he raised his family over
here; all the kids had grown up over here, and
he said he never intended to go back to Japan,
although he said he would like to see his birth
place. He said he wanted to be a citizen, but he
said, “They won’t let me.” He was very bitter
about that.

Did he keep his job after he got married to
your mother?

RN: Yes, he stayed with the railroad. By
that time the railroad had gone through into
Salt Lake, so he took up residence in Salt Lake
City, and then later on he got a job working on
the Orem Electric Line, which is that electric
line from Provo, Utah, to Salt Lake City, Utah.
He got a job as the foreman on the crew there.
That’s when I was born; I was born in Provo,
Utah. After that old tour he went to the coal
mines. My dad was one of these fellows that
wanted to try everything. He would liked to
have tried a lot of other things, but he couldn’t

go into all fields, because it was not possible.
You might say it was almost forbidden for an
ethnic person, a minority person, to go for
the better jobs. Even if he tried, he wouldn’t
get them. So he went to the coal mines, and
he stayed in central Utah working in the coal
mines as a motorman.

Then my mother was taken ill. She had a
heart condition, so she had to go to a doctor in
Ogden, Utah. While there she didn’t want to
go back to central Utah; didn’t want to go back
to the coal-mine town. I don’t blame her. It was
no place to be stuck, raising a family. So she
talked my dad into leaving his job and coming
to Ogden, Utah. She had, unbeknownst to
him, arranged to buy a noodle parlor there,
[laughter] You know what a noodle parlor is?
It’s a little eating place, and they serve noodles
and sukiyaki and things like that. So she didn’t
know too much about business, but because of
her desire to stay in Ogden, Utah, she talked
to this fellow that had this place for sale. It
wasn’t the building, just the business. So she
talked my father into it.

He quit his job there with the coal-mining
company, and he moved all of us into Ogden,
Utah. It was a bad move. He always said that
he never should have listened to Mama,
because they went bankrupt. They were there
one year. She hadn’t realized that business
was so poor, because on that same street, on
that one street, there were one, two, three,
four noodle parlors. There was the Bamboo
Noodle Parlor; there was that noodle parlor,
this noodle parlor—and here she was. The
reason the fellow wanted to sell was because
business was so bad.

But my dad got acquainted with several
people there, and they started coming over
there and having their dinners and their
lunches. It was sort of a young group that
liked to go fishing and hunting. So they came
there, but just those few people coming there

Roy Nishiguchi

all the time couldn’t support the business,
so it folded. It was during the Depression,
too—1927, 1928, 1929. We moved to Salt
Lake. They couldn’t sell the business; they just
had to give it up and move out.

So we moved to Salt Lake then, and times
were terrible; times were awful. My dad
couldn’t get a job. I remember he used to work
two or three days as a crossing watchman for
the railroad that he helped build. They did
give him a job there, because of his past. So I
recall him going to work about three times a
week. Finally, he latched on to a job as section
foreman—well, not a section foreman then—
extra gang foreman.

I don’t know if you are familiar with how
the railroad was set up in those days, how
the maintenance section of the railroad was
set up. They had the railroad divided into
ten-mile sections. Each ten-mile section
had a foreman and a crew, and they were
responsible for keeping up the track, so the
trains could go over them smoothly. Over
this whole section from Salt Lake to Elko,
Nevada, was one division boss; they called
them division engineers. From Salt Lake to
Elko they had one extra gang. Now this was
a big crew, say, about thirty or forty men that
replaced the rails and did all the heavy work.
They’d go from place to place and stop at bad
areas and take off the rails and replace the
whole track.

Well, he got a job as foreman of that crew,
and that was because of his past experience.
When he got that job, though, he couldn’t be
with the family. We had to live in Salt Lake,
and he was out somewhere in Nevada at all
times. We never knew where he was. He’d
come home once a month. I always thought
that he came home once a month just to
check up on me to see how I was doing in
school, [laughter] because I showed him my
first report card. He demanded to see my first

report card, and I got the worst scolding I
ever got in my life, and it didn’t do any good.
So then he bribed me. [laughter] He told me
that he would give me a dollar for every A
that I got. My grades got better, [laughter] But
times were hard. I don’t know how my mother
raised all of us through those hard times. We
were hungry all the time! [laughter] Terrible!

How many brothers and sisters did you have?

RN: I have one brother.

EN: Well there was eight of you.

RN: How many sisters?

EN: There were two boys, and the rest
were girls, so that’s six sisters, and your sister
Mary is the oldest, and then you, and then
Art, and then Ida, and then Bessie, and then
Gracie, and then Joy, and then Mimi.

RN: Yes, Mary is the oldest. I had six sisters
and two brothers, you might say, but one
brother died when he was just an infant. So
we always said we had six girls and two boys
in the family. My brother Art is three years
younger than I, and I have one sister older than
I, and the other girls are all living here in town,
except for one who is living in California. I lost
one sister about five years ago, and then I lost
another sister two years this coming March.
Yes, a year and nine months ago. So now there
are four sisters and two of us boys left, two of
us old men. [laughter]

So you had a big family? So your mother was
a housewife? She never did work outside the
home?

RN: No. She never did work. Oh, on
occasions, like when we moved to Reno, she

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

would go to her friend’s place who had a truck
farm, and she’d go help them pick onions and
things like that. Other than that, she never
worked. She couldn’t; she had too many kids
to take care of. [laughter]

Eight, yes.

RN: Washing and ironing. She was strictly
a housewife.

You said that your family came to the northern
part of Nevada?

RN: Yes.

That was when?

RN: 1933. Although the extra gang paid
more money, my dad found an opening of a
section, that is, a ten-mile section of track that
he could be foreman of. That was in Gerlach,
Nevada, north of here. At that time Gerlach
had a grammar school and a high school,
and so he put in his bid for that job and got
it. That was in July 1933. So we all had to take
up roots and come to Gerlach. [laughter] That
was a heart-breaking move for me, because I
was in my teens then. I had just finished high
school that June. I had taken the entrance
examinations for the University of Utah, and
I was hoping I would be able to go, but we had
to come to Nevada, and if you have ever seen
Gerlach, Nevada, for the first time, you would
probably feel the way I did. There’s nothing
there, just nothing there. It’s out in nowhere.
It hasn’t changed much to this very day. We
go up there to go fishing now and then, but
it’s a desolate place.

I talked my dad into letting me go back
to Salt Lake three months every winter,
which I would do. I did that for two winters,
went back and stayed with my friend. I’d go

in October and come back in February or
March, but the longer we lived in Gerlach,
the more accustomed I got to this place, and,
eventually, I got used to it. I stopped going to
Salt Lake, because it was too far, and I hated
to be away from the family, my sisters. So it
got to the point where I made friends and got
acquainted, got some good buddies there, and
I finally got accustomed to the place, and my
desire to go back to Salt Lake left me.

Was it a Japanese ideal, or did your mother or
your father ask you to be with the family, even
after you graduated from high school?

RN: My mother and dad tried to keep
the family together all the time. I think that’s
one of my downfalls. That was something
that worked against me, because I didn’t get
married until I was thirty-four years old. I
didn’t get married until I was thirty-four,
because I was home, living at home, bringing
my pay check home, and giving it to my
mother. If I needed any spending money,
I would ask her for it. But that’s one of the
things that, if I had it to do over again, I would
do it differently. I would go out on my own.
I could do that and still help them out. But I
was kept there at home, and I thought it was
part of the Japanese tradition. I don’t know too
much about that. All I know is my dad told
me that, “You are the oldest boy; you have a
responsibility to look after this, look after that,
do this and do that.” That was pounded into
my head from the time I was a teenager. Sol
ended up living at home until I was thirty-four.

This young lady here, my wife, she pulled
me away from them. She didn’t do it, but, I
mean, she was going to go back East where she
came from, and when she said that, why, I just
said, “OK, let’s get married then.” [laughter]

So, Elizabeth, you’re originally from Reno?

Roy Nishiguchi

EN: No, I’m from Minneapolis,
Minnesota.

RN: I met her in Reno.

Did you work in Reno, or did you often come
to Reno?

RN: I worked here in Reno. You see in
1934 . . . we’ll go back to the time I lived in
Gerlach. When I became eighteen years of
age, my dad, who knew the railroad people
real well, got me a job as a student foreman.
In other words, I was working for the railroad,
but I was being trained to become a foreman.
I didn’t like that, but I couldn’t say anything
about it. So anytime a section foreman way
out somewhere wanted to go on vacation or
wanted to leave the job for a couple of weeks,
they’d send me out as a relief foreman to take
over the fellow’s job while he was gone. That
happened to me twice, and finally I couldn’t
take it. I couldn’t stand it any more, being
stuck out in the boondocks by myself. So the
second time they sent me out, I wired the road
master. He was the fellow in charge of that five
hundred miles there. I wired him and told him
to send out a relief foreman, because I was
leaving. So he came out there; he thought I’d
damaged the track some way. He was down on
his hands and knees and examined the level
of the rails and said, “Why are you quitting?
You are doing an excellent job.”

I said, “That’s not the reason why I’m
quitting—because I can’t handle the job.” I
said, “The work is a snap. I’m leaving because
I’m a young man, and I don’t want to be
stranded out here anymore. That’s the reason
why I’m asking you to send out a relief.” So he
did.

He said, “Well. . .”, this is on a Saturday,
and he said, “I’ll have a relief foreman out here
Monday morning.”

So I got my suitcase together, and I
jumped on a freight train and came back to
Gerlach. I thought, “Never again.”

So I quit the railroad, much to the anger
of my dad. My father became quite angry
over that. But I got a job at the gypsum plant.
I played baseball. I was a pitcher on the town
baseball team. So when I applied for the job
at the gypsum plant, the Pacific Portland
Cement Company, the foreman said, “Put him
on, because,” he said, “he’s a pitcher. We need
him. We can’t lose him.” The superintendent
was the manager of the baseball team. So he
gave me a job there to keep me in the local
area. Otherwise, I might have to leave town
to get a job.

That was quite an ordeal, working there
and having my dad look down on me, because
he claimed that I gave up the best job that a
man could have. My dad thought that being a
section foreman, working for the railroad, was
the best thing that a person could get, because
he’d done it so long. He said, “You have your
house furnished; you have your fuel and your
coal, your lighting,” which was kerosene. He
said, “What could you ask for? You can’t get
that anywhere else.” That was his life, but I
couldn’t stand it. Even then, I was giving my
mom the money, all my paychecks.

While pitching for the baseball team there
one summer, a fellow who had been watching
me pitch for several games came up to me one
day and said, “How would you like to go to
Portola?”

I said, “What’s in Portola?”

He said, “We have a crackerjack baseball
team, and every summer in baseball season
we hire athletes from all over.” He said,
“We have athletes from the University of
California, St. Mary’s, San Jose State, and we
give them jobs during the summer.” He said,
“If you will come and be our pitcher, we’ll get
you a job and keep you on all the year around,

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

because you’re from our area; you’re not a
student.” So I asked him how much it would
pay and he said, “Well, we’ll get you a job for
three hundred dollars a month.”

Well, I was working for eighty-seven
dollars a month for the railroad. For the
gypsum plant I was working for five dollars
a day, five dollars and thirty-five cents a day.
So three hundred dollars a month I thought,
great! I told my dad about it. He said, “If you
take that job, don’t you ever set foot in my
house again. All you think about is play.”

I tried to explain to him that with three

hundred dollars a month I could live and

send him home the greater portion of it.

But, no, he didn’t want that, so I gave that

up. That was the way my life went, because I

was the oldest son in the family. I’m not bitter

about it. I respected my dad. I didn’t agree

with his ideas, but I respected him. But in

1939, we used to play sand-lot football out

in Gerlach between the CCC Camp and the

town. So during one of our scrimmages an

ex University of Nevada athlete was there,

and he asked if I ever thought about going

to college. I said, “I’ve thought about it day

in and day out, but,” I said, “I can’t afford to
»
g°-

He said, “Would you go, if you had
tuition?”

I said, “Paid-for scholarship?” I said, “Yes,
I would.”

“OK,” he said, “You’re a pretty good
football player; you’re a pretty good runner,
so,” he said, “I’ll go in and talk to Jim Aiken,
the coach, and get you a scholarship, athletic
scholarship.” This fellow happened to be
Ted Demosthenes, one of the ex-University
of Nevada’s players who was all-conference
center that was talking to me.

So I told him, “Yes, I would like to go to
school.” So he got me the scholarship, and I
came to the University of Nevada.

My dad . . . [laughter] my father raised
holy hell. He said, “You are no longer my son.
You still think about nothing but play.” And
I tried to explain to him that I was going to
play to get an education. He said, “No.”

So after six weeks I dropped out and went
back to Gerlach. They tried to keep me on;
the university tried to keep me on—the coach
did. They finally let me go and said, “If you
promise to come back in the fall.”

See, I was going there in January, so that
I would be eligible for varsity football in the
fall. That’s when Nevada first broke away from
the Far Western Conference. Nevada became
an independent. So if I was in school one
semester I could play varsity. So I told them,
“No, I’ve got to go home.”

“Promise to come back in the fall. I’m
counting on you.”

I said, “Well, we’ll see. I’ll try it.” So I
left, and I never did go back. Then in 1941 I
was drafted for military service for a year, I
thought, but it turned out that I was in for the
duration. You know, you’re Japanese. You’re
Nihonjin, and you can sympathize with me.
I was drafted into the army, into the United
States Army, sent to Fort Ord, California.
You know, they wouldn’t serve me drinks
in Monterey bars, because I was Japanese,
[laughter] I could go to a Japanese place, but,
no, my two buddies that wanted me to go to
town with them took me into this bar right
next to the baseball field. Walked in and they
wouldn’t serve me. My buddies, one was of
Greek descent, one was of Italian descent.
They looked over to me and said, “Nish.” They
called me Nish for short. They said, “Nish,
where’s your drink?”

I said, “Well, I haven’t got it yet.”

So they called the bartender. The bartender
came over there and whispered to one of
them. My buddy said, “Because he’s what?” I
heard him say that.

Roy Nishiguchi

So they said, “Come on Nish, come on,
let’s get the hell out of this place.” They had
their drinks; they hadn’t paid for them yet,
because they were waiting for me to get mine.
They took their drinks and slammed them
into the counter.

See, I didn’t feel any of that discrimination
when I lived in Gerlach, because we were
the only Japanese family there, and I guess
we were a rarity. Then we were something
unusual to them, so they were nice to us. I
went to California, and, God, I was bitter
about that. My buddies in the army were OK,
because they were from other parts of the
country. They weren’t from California.

While in the army, I was sent to Letterman
Hospital for training. I became the star
pitcher, and I was pitching on December 7,
1941. We were facing our toughest opp onent,
and in the third inning a fellow came running
over and said, “Pearl Harbor has been
bombed!”

So the umpire wouldn’t let him talk.
He was a drunk, you know. The fellow was
a drunk. They got him off the field, and we
finished the game and went over to the bar
where we usually went for a beer after the
game. There was the radio blasting, just
blaring out the news that Pearl Harbor had
been bombed, “All military report to their
posts immediately.”

So they took me up to the post and got me
my clothes. I changed clothes and they took
me down to the bus depot, but this fellow that
was taking me down stopped, and he said,
“I’ve got to pick up my girlfriend.” She was a
girl, his girl friend, who went to all the games
with us. There again he stopped, and she came
out and Gaydos said, “Come on, get in. I got
to get Nish to the bus depot to take him back
to Fort Ord.” This was in San Francisco.

So she said, “No.”

“Come on, get in, hurry.”

“I’m not getting into a car with a God¬
damned Jap.” [laughter]

Oh, that hit me hard, because, see, we
were a threesome all the time, his girl friend,
Gaydos and I. He was my catcher. So I laud
him for it. He got out of the car and knocked
her over right on her back. He just smashed
her in the face and left her sitting there on the
sidewalk. He said, “You dirty bitch! Come on
let’s go, Nish.”

We went up to the bus depot and it was
bedlam there. The place was just crowded,
civilians, military, everyone was there trying
to get on the buses. They wouldn’t let civilians
get on; the military had to go first. So I
managed to get onto a bus, and I went back to
Fort Ord, and it was blacked out. They didn’t
know. They thought Japan was right offshore,
I guess, because all the lights were blacked
out. I went back to the post and couldn’t see.
It was kind of foggy, and I sort of had to path
out my way back to the company. They were
all out in the streets ready to march out. So
I got all my equipment, got into my regular
fatigue uniform and joined them. We went out
one mile away to East Garrison. There went
my application for OCS. I was slated to go
to Officers Candidate School, and that Pearl
Harbor attack did away with that.

So, while stationed at Fort Ord, I got
word. I don’t know why it took so long, but
in February I got word from my sister, who
had come all the way from Tennessee to visit
my brother, who was also drafted. He was
drafted in the latter part of January. So she
came out from Tennessee to be with him,
because, you know, in war time you don’t
know what’s going to happen. So she came
out to say goodbye to him. So while she was
there—it was fortunate that she was still
there—the railroad kept my dad on the job
from December seventh until the latter part
of January and then kicked him out, took his

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

job away, because being a Japanese national
he’s a security risk. So they ordered him to
leave the railroad property

Well, the whole town of Gerlach was on
railroad property So Mom and Dad didn’t
know what to do. Well, one of my friends who
was not drafted yet at the time, he got a bunch
of fellows together, and he rented a trailer for
my mom and dad, and they took the trailer off
railroad property, which meant that it was out
in the desert, out in the brush. And it was, too!
Stuck out there in the boondocks, and that is
what my mother and dad lived in for about
three months, through the winter. No toilet
facilities, no nothing. You’d step outside, and
you’d step in that mud; that is not fine mud.

Well, when my sister wrote to me and told
me about the course of events, I dashed home,
took the Greyhound Bus. I didn’t have any
money. I borrowed money from my buddies
at Fort Ord, took the bus and came to Reno.
I was going to stop off in Reno and then call
my sister to drive in after me, because I left
my car with them. So I went to this Overland
Hotel, and the fellow wouldn’t give me a room.
He wouldn’t give me a room, because he said,
“You are a dirty Jap.”

I said, “I have an American uniform on;
at least respect your country’s uniform.”

He said, “You’re a God-damned dirty Jap.
Get out of here.” [laughter] So I grabbed the
pen stand—there was a marble pen stand
there—and I threw it at him with all . . . I
intended to hit him with it, but I missed. It hit
against the wall and shattered the porcelain
tiles—shattered the tiles. I think if I had hit
him, it would have killed him, might have
killed him.

So I stormed out of there, and, out of
the money that I borrowed to take home, I
used thirty dollars of it to go from Reno to
Portola to catch the train. The cab driver
was nice enough to drive me out there, but

he said it would cost me thirty dollars. So I
went to Portola, caught the train, and went
into Gerlach, got there, and inquired about
Mom and Pop, and my sister told me where
they were. I asked her not to come with me,
because it was too muddy; it was wintertime
then.

So I walked out there, and there was that
trailer out in nowhere! And I sloshed through
that gumbo mud, that muddy off-white soil.
My feet got about that big. It stuck to my
shoes. I walked out there, and the trailer was
just large enough to hold a double bed, and
that was all. I knocked on the door, and I could
hear my mother and dad talking. They were
afraid; they were scared! They were afraid that
someone was there to blast them. I could hear
them whispering, so I called out, and I said,
“It’s Roy!”

So my dad opened the door then. I didn’t
think it happened in America, but it sure did.
Well, there wasn’t a thing I could do for them.
They couldn’t stay on railroad property. My
time was limited; I only had a seven-day leave.
A seven-day furlough was all I had. It took a
day going and a day coming, so I only had five
days there. And there wasn’t a thing I could
do. What could I do? I couldn’t move them
to Reno. I didn’t know Reno. I didn’t know
anything, but my friend, Paul Wayne, told
me, “Go back to Fort Ord; we’ll take care of
them. We’ll look out for your mom and dad.”
So I went back to Fort Ord then.

In the meantime, a year later, I don’t
know how it happened, but my mom and
dad had moved to Reno, and they had taken
my youngest sister with them. She was just a
baby then. The other girls stayed in Gerlach to
finish school, and they stayed with my oldest
sister, who was visiting from Tennessee. She
had rented a house in town. Now they could
stay in town, because they were American
citizens, but my dad and mom were put out in

Roy Nishiguchi

the desert. So, eventually, everyone moved to
Reno, over a course of a year and a half. They
all got into Reno.

I’d been transferred to Texas in the
meantime. The army had pulled all the Nisei
off the coast. All the Nisei in the army on
the West Coast were transferred inland. We
didn’t know where we were going. I, for one,
thought that I would be going into combat.
No, we didn’t go into combat. They sent my
group down to Camp Wolters, Texas. They
sent some others to Missouri. But I ended
up in Texas and I became a trained medical
technician who served the army the first
year by [laughter] emptying garbage cans.
We were American soldiers, serving in the
American army, doing jobs that were formerly
performed by the bad element in the army,
those that were put in the stockade, prisoners
in the stockade that don’t like work that we
had to do. But after the Hawaiian Nisei made
such a good showing in Europe, you know,
the Hundredth Battalion, things got better
for us. Then when the Four Forty-Second
Regimental Combat Team was organized in
Camp Shelby, Mississippi, all of the Nisei were
treated like dogs by the townspeople there.
I didn’t make it there, because they sent me
up to study Japanese—studying the Nihongo,
Japanese Fanguage, to go to the Pacific. But
those that went to Camp Shelby eventually
ended up fighting in Europe. Then there was
such irony, because they were treated like
dogs—and a couple of those boys, my friends,
lost their lives. Went over to get killed. After
the Four Forty-Second was in battle over
there for several months, they treated us
like kings in Texas, especially after the Nisei
rescued a Texas Battalion. They thought we
were deserving of the best then. I was working
in the hospital ward and getting pushed
around and all that stuff. When the Four
Forty-Second rescued the Texas Battalion of

the Thirty-Sixth Division (Texas, Oklahoma,
Fouisiana Division), then things got real good
for us, for me.

Then I came home in 1944,1 think. Well,
first of all, I spent a tour up there in Camp
Savage, up in Minnesota, studying Japanese.
It was tough, because I didn’t know Japanese.
I went to Nihongako (Japanese school) in Salt
Fake. But my dad was funny. My dad was so
gung-ho on being an American that he told
mom, “There’s no use spending money to
send them to Japanese school after the regular
school, because we’re in America,” he said. So
I went to Japanese school for two years; two
years I went. I’d go to high school, come back
and go to Japanese school. I enjoyed it. I was
learning my mother’s tongue. But I couldn’t
finish; I couldn’t continue. So when I was sent
up to Military Intelligence Fanguage School,
it was tough, [laughter] but I didn’t want to
flunk out, so I used to study in the latrine after
“lights out” at ten p.m.

But I didn’t want to flunk out of school,
Japanese language school, because that would
be disgraceful, I thought. So I studied hard.
I used to use the dictionary and write a
letter home in Japanese to my mother, using
the dictionary and getting the right kanji
(Japanese characters) and everything. My
mother was real proud about that. I said, “Well
I made a lot of mistakes, didn’t I?”

And she said, “No, it’s amazing.” She said,
“You’re sure learning a lot.”

And I said, “No, I’m not learning.” I had a
smattering of the format to put the letters into,
but I said, “I used the dictionary.” But she was
still proud of me. Then two weeks before my
group was supposed to go overseas, I had to go
and see a doctor, and he found a lump on the
side of my neck. So he sent me to the station
hospital. So I didn’t make it. I think, perhaps,
God was with me. I think he was looking out
for me for some reason, I don’t know what.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

But my group got over there, over to Okinawa,
and they all died. Their plane—they were in a
C-47—hit a peak over there in the fog. I got
wind of this later on, afterwards, while I was
still in the hospital. I got word that Sergeant
Nakajima and his twelve interrogators and
interpreters were killed in a plane crash. I
thought, “My God! I guess the good Lord is
looking out for me.”

Well, after that, they wouldn’t let me go
back in the service. They said, “We can’t let
you get back in. We have to give you a medical
discharge.”

I didn’t want that. How could I have spent
all this time in the army? And all my friends
are in the army. “You can’t send me home.”

“We have to.”

I made up every excuse possible. I told
them, “I have to stay in the army, because I’ve
got my army pay going home to my parents.”
See, of my army pay, I had to give forty-five
dollars out of my fifty-two dollars, put into
what they called a Class E Allotment. The
government would match it. My folks would
then get ninety dollars. So I gave forty-five
dollars every month; Uncle Sam would give
forty-five; my folks would get ninety. I had
three dollars and fifty cents to live on each
month after donations to the Company
Fund, et cetera, for the three years I was in
the service. And they were going to send me
home. I said, “No. What will my folks live on?”

“Well, we’ll give you a 100 percent
disability; that’s a hundred dollars a month,”
they said, [laughter] “We’ll give you 100
percent disability, which is one hundred and
fifteen dollars.”

I said, “No. I’ve got to stay in the service.
All my buddies are in the service. I don’t want
to go home, there’s nobody there. All my
buddies are in service.”

Well, they said, “No, we have to. We can’t
let you get back in active ranks and have you

go overseas and be an added work load to the
doctors.” They told me I had something wrong
with... what it was, it was an infection in my
lymph glands that caused that lump to get big.
I thought it was because of a basketball injury
when I got knocked into the seats. But they
said, “No, we can’t take the chance of giving
the doctors overseas an additional work load.
So we’ve got to give you a discharge.”

So they did. They sent me home, and I
went to my old job back out in Gerlach for
about six months. Then I thought, “Well, I’m
going to see about going to the university.” So
I enrolled in the university in the College of
Engineering, and I couldn’t make it, because
my clothes were wearing out. [laughter] All
my army clothes. I was still wearing my army
clothes for the two years, but they were getting
worn, and I couldn’t buy myself any clothes
with the money they gave me for education.
They gave me a hundred and twenty-seven
dollars a month. The regular GI were getting
ninety dollars a month, but I was getting one
hundred and twenty-seven, because of my
disability. One hundred of that was going to
my mother and dad. My dad couldn’t get a
job in Reno. My sisters couldn’t get decent
work. One sister happened to get a job with
the Reno Evening Gazette, but the others had
to pick odd jobs like working in a potato-chip
factory.

Even though they were citizens?

RN: Yes, they are citizens, but they
couldn’t get any work. You don’t realize how
bad Reno was. They wouldn’t give me—a GI,
a soldier—a room in a hotel. They were really
racially prejudiced here in this town. This is a
bad town. It was bad. I’m lucky that there were
Indians around, because the Indians took the
pressure off me by being Indians. They were
harassed. They were persecuted, too. So a

Roy Nishiguchi

lot of times I thought, “Thank God, there’s
Indians around here. They’ll take the brunt of
the persecution off my shoulders.” [laughter]
You know I’m looking at it. I was bitter back
in those days. I was especially bitter when I
came back from the army. I was bitter, because
I thought, “God I’m born and raised in this
country and served in the army and it didn’t
make any difference. Nothing improved.” This
was a bad town. I guess it’s better now; it’s a lot
better now. It’s because of the younger people.
See, the old ones that were responsible for all
this persecution, are old now, and the young
kids at that time are now the adults of today,
and they have a different outlook on things. So
things are better. But the old timers are really
bad. People don’t know this, but I do, because
I’m Japanese, and I felt it. I don’t know how
you people in Japan felt, but we had a tough
way to go, especially on the West Coast.

It’s amazing how different sections
of the country are. Like when I’m in the
army, I couldn’t go to a bar and be served
in California, but when I went back to
Minnesota, they were Caucasians, too—
they were the same white people, same as
those living here in California—but those
back there treated us like human beings. Of
course, I guess it was because there weren’t
many Japanese living back there, back East.
I think, well, in a way, I guess the Japanese
were harassed in California, because there
were so many of them. That’s where they all
congregated. I had one fellow tell me, “You
Japanese are a clannish lot.”

What’s that?

RN: Clannish, you know, like we stick
together a lot. I said, “No, we’re not clannish.”
But I said, “We’re forced to stick together,
because you people,” I said, “you honkeys...”
I told this one fellow—he was my buddy but

I told him—which is borrowing from the
Negro, the blacks, “You honkeys won’t accept
us.

So he laughed, and he said, “Well, we’re
not all like that.” He told me. He was my good
buddy. He said, “We’re not all like that.”

But I said, “That’s the reason why in
California the Japanese always get together,
congregate in one area. They live in one
certain section of town, because they were
driven to it. They weren’t allowed to rent a
home over there. They weren’t allowed to buy
a home over here.” It’s the same thing that the
blacks are facing today, but I think things are
getting better for all of us now, because of
the baby boomers that are growing up now.
They were all right, but the old timers, they
were a narrow-minded, bigoted lot. They were
bigoted from the word “go.” Like I said before,
somebody might argue this point with me, but
I’ve been there.

So, you said you didn’t finish school?

RN: No. See, I went the first year, but I
went to summer school, because I wanted
to get as many credits as I could to get these
out of the way, because I was thirty years old
when I went to the university. I was no young
chicken. I had been out of high school for
twelve years, and there was nothing in this
head. I had to study real hard, and I had to
try to get back into the swing of things, and
I thought if I go to summer school, why, the
change in my life would stay with me. So I
went the first year and went to summer school
and went the second year, and then one of my
buddies told me, “Hey, Nish, you got a hole
in your sleeve.” [laughter]

That was embarrassing, I didn’t notice.
So then I got to looking at my clothes, my
GI clothes, I was still wearing army clothes,
two years after being out of the service. I had

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

some clothes that I wore before I went into
the army, but then they wouldn’t fit me. So
I thought, “Well I had better go to work this
summer.” So I did. I went back out to Gerlach
to the plant where I used to work, and they
gave me a job. The bad and unfortunate
thing was, just when I was getting ready to
quit my job and come back to school, the
chairman of the board of trustees out there at
the high school asked me if I would stay and
coach their high school basketball team. [I
must have been confused about this period,
during the interview, because I did coach
the Gerlach High School basketball team in
1947 and 1948 and went to work for Marshall
Guisti in the fall of 1948.] So I said, “Well
I’ve got to go back to the university. I’ve got
to go back and enroll. In fact, I’m a day late
now,” because the juniors have to register
on a certain day, and upperclassmen have to
register on a certain day, and the freshmen
on a different day. So I said, “I’m already
a day late. All my classes probably will be
filled.”

So I drove in to Reno, and Fred Aoyama,
whom you interviewed, and his partner had
a service station and a tire distributorship
down here on the corner of Fourth and Lake.
He said, “What brings you in town this time
of the week?”

I said, “I came in to enroll at the university.”

So Marshall, his partner, came out and
said, “You’re late.”

I said, “I know I’m late; I’m a day late, but
I’m going to go up on the hill and try to get
some of the classes that I am required to have.”

So Fred took me aside and said, “Roy, why
don’t you stay here and work?” He said, “We’ll
work you into a 10 percent partnership, 10
percent of the business.”

I said, “Is that right?”

He said, “Yes. A1 Black, our other partner,
quit and took out his share of the business.” So

he said, “You stay with us, come to work for
us, and you can work into that 10 percent.”

So I thought, “Well, that sounds good,”
because it was a growing business. So I went
to work for Marshall Guisti and Fred Aoyama.
I came into town and brought all my clothes
and didn’t go back to school, [laughter] So I
worked for Fred Aoyama and Marshall for
four years, and then I injured my back.

I was under doctor’s care, surgeon’s care,
for nine months. He told me I couldn’t go
back to that kind of work any more. He said,
“I can’t release you for that kind of work.”

So I went back to Fred and Marshall to
see if they would let me work the gas pumps,
rather than work the tires. “No, we can’t do
that.” Marshall was very forward about it. He
said, “If we hire you back, it’s going to boost
our insurance rates.”

I said, “OK.”

So that’s when I went to apply for a job
out at Stead Air Force Base. I met a lieutenant
here in town at the bowling alley, and I told
him my situation. He told me to come out
to the base, and he would introduce me to
the captain, who might be able to put me on,
because the base had just opened. So I went
out, and they gave me a job. They started
me out as a warehouseman. I worked from a
warehouseman to a leader, so-called leader,
to a foreman, and then one of the supply
officers came out. He wanted to stabilize the
position, because it was formerly filled by
military officers, who’d come and go. They
might come in and be here four months, and
they might get going on a mission. Another
officer would come in. So there was no
continuity there. So this major, Major Saylor,
asked me what I thought about it. He said,
“I want to make you my materiel facilities
officer.”

I said, “That’s a military slot. I can’t fill it.”

He said, “I’ll convert it to civilian.”

Roy Nishiguchi

So I thought, “Hell, he probably can’t get
it converted.”

But he came to me the next day, and he
said, “OK. Manpower and civilian personnel
have agreed to convert that slot from military
to civilian.” So he said, “I want you to fill it.”

I said, “Well, how about my boss, the boss
who is over me, who is also a civilian?”

The major told me, “I want you to fill it.”

I said, “Well, you’re going to create
friction.”

Well, he said, “I’m ordering you to take
it.” So I took the job, and it did create friction.
The guy who was formerly my boss resented
it very much, and I don’t blame him, because
he’d been in civil service longer than I. He was
highly resentful of me being chosen over him,
me being chosen to be his boss. I took him
aside and talked to him, and he relented. He
cooled down. We became pretty good friends,
as well as fellow employees. But I became
materiel facilities officer of base supply, which
position I filled until they closed the base
in 1966. They held me over for another two
years to be in charge of the base closure. So I
was released from there in 1968 when all the
equipment was disposed of.

I went to work for Lear Motors, Lear
Enterprises, out at Stead. From there I went to
K-Mart Warehouse, became a foreman there,
supervisor. They called them supervisors
then. Now they call them area leaders. Then I
injured my knee, but I was over retirement age,
anyway, so I decided to take my retirement.
I retired when I was age seventy. I am now
seventy-seven.

While I was there working at the K-Mart
Warehouse, Mr. Honda, the auto manufacturer
from Japan—he died recently—came through
with about forty associates on a tour of the
warehouses. I guess they wanted to compare
the warehousing in Japan to the warehousing
over here. He was a very nice person, Mr.

Honda. He had some very knowledgeable
people with him, too. You know I don’t speak
very good Japanese. In fact, my Japanese is
very poor. I tried to talk to him in Japanese,
but I couldn’t. So I’d speak some Japanese
words and some English, mostly English, but I
heard Mr. Honda ask one of his subordinates,
“He’s most likely a Nisei?”

So I said, “Yes, I’m a Nisei. I was born here.
My parents came from Japan.” And I told him,
“I’m ashamed that I can’t speak Japanese very
good.” [laughter]

He told me, “That’s all right.” He said, “I
don’t speak very good English, either,” Quite
a nice fellow. When he departed, he left me
with a gift. Mr. Honda was a very nice fellow,
I thought. I know that he had the respect of all
those people with him. It’s so different to see
people on that level compared to the people
on that level over here. That’s between you
and me.

While I was there at the warehouse
there were several incidences when the
warehousing general supervisor found fault
with some of the merchandise that came
from Japan. In this one case we had a big
shipment of photo albums come over, and
they had those magnetic self-adhesive pages
in them. Some of the stores that we shipped
them out to sent them back and said, “The
pages aren’t adhesive. They’re not working
the way they are supposed to.” So Mr. Carne,
our general manager, complained to the
head office of K-Mart Corporation, and they
contacted the Japanese manufacturers. They
sent over eight people, and those people
went through two thousand five hundred
cases in seven days time, opening each case
of twenty-four albums and replacing the bad
pages, and it was then that I realized I had
fellows working for me that just couldn’t put
out, didn’t have the initiative, didn’t have the
desire to work.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

I watched these fellows and I told one
of my guys, “If you fellows only worked like
that.” I said, “If you would work only half as
efficiently as those fellows working there.”

He agreed with me. He said, “Boy, I’ve
never seen anyone work so efficiently.” But
they went through all those cases; everything
was systematic. One fellow cut open the box.
He dumped the thing upside down, taped
the box over at the other end, and this fellow
would start going through it, opening it page
by page, take the screw driver, and take out
the bad ones, pass it to the next fellow. He
put in the good ones; the next fellow put in
the screws; the next fellow would pack them
back in the cases—two thousand five hundred
cases in one week—in seven days time, and
they only worked eight hours a day.

The fellows down there at the warehouse
marveled. “Jesus Christ, they must be crazy!”
[laughter] The difference of attitude, I’m
telling you this. I don’t how the university is
going to accept the truth. That is the truth.

What kind of social life did your mother have?

RN: Oh, what kind of social life she had?
I would say that my mother’s social life was
normal, because there were other Japanese
families around.

In Utah?

RN: Yes, in Salt Lake. I think it was
normal. She always took part in church affairs;
she always had her friends come and visit her;
she would go and visit her friends in return.
Oh, I think she enjoyed it there in Utah, in
Salt Lake. I know that she was lonely for them
after we came to Gerlach, after we came to
Nevada, being the only Japanese family there.
I’m sure, I know, I sensed it, I felt that she was
lonely, but my dad was gracious enough to let

her go back and visit her friends every now
and then. She’d get on the train, but mom
wouldn’t stay very long, because she missed
her kids too much. She couldn’t stay away
from her children, but she had no social life
there in Gerlach. She had no social life at
all. She tried to mingle with the Caucasian
ladies there, but she had one good friend.
She had one good Caucasian friend who
had moved to Gerlach; her husband moved
to Gerlach. Mom would talk to her in her
broken English, but they understood each
other; they got along real good, and that was
the only friend she had.

Did your mother talk with you and your brother
and sisters in Japanese or broken English?

RN: My mother spoke to us in Japanese,
but my dad would speak to us in English. So
we had both languages going on in the house,
[laughter]

Your mother spoke Japanese to your father?

RN: Oh, yes.

And he spoke back to her in Japanese?

RN: Yes. Sometimes he would speak back
to her in English, and she’d look at him, and
he would jokingly tell her, “You’ve been in the
country almost as long as I have, but you don’t
understand what I’m saying in English?”

So one time that he was telling her that, I
said, “But, Pop,” I said, “but you don’t speak
very good English, either.” I said, “Maybe that’s
why she doesn’t understand you.” [laughter]
But no, they spoke Japanese, but now and
then he’d speak English to her, because in
the house, at home, he would speak to us
in English. You know, it’s something pretty
comical, [laughter] I never chuckled when I

Roy Nishiguchi

saw him, but he would never speak Japanese
to us.

A funny thing, when I was a kid—I’ll
never forget this—when I was a kid back in
the coal mines, my dad was with me making
a boat for me, whittling away, and something
came up about wars. So he told me, he said,
“Roy, if America and Japan fight, who do you
fight for?” He was talking in English, because
he insisted that that was our language. I was
born in America, and I’m going to be an
American. So he always spoke in English. So
he said, “If Japan and America fight, who are
you going to fight for?”

So I said, “Japan.”

He said, “Baka (fool)!” [laughter] He
said, “You were born in this country; you are
an American. You fight for your country.”
So I told him then—I was about twelve or
thirteen—well, we talked about it. I said, “You
talked about fighting for your own people.” I
said, “You told me how Japanese would fight
to the death for their country.” So I said, “I’m
Japanese. So I’ll fight for them.”

He said, “You are American. You are born
in America. This is your country. You fight for
this country” He was funny that way, but he
changed later on. He was very bitter. He was
very bitter about the fact that they denied him a
chance to become a citizen. He studied so hard,
and he tried so hard to become a U.S. citizen,
but because of his race, he was out. And he
was bitter about that. But he said, “I’m going to
keep on studying.” He said, “I’m going to keep
on reading.” He said, “Because that’s for me.”
He said, “Everything I read is for me. Whether
anybody else wants it or not, it doesn’t matter.”
But he was bitter about being denied citizenship.

Finally, he got citizenship, didn’t he?

RN: Yes, he did. That was after that law
was revoked. When he first became eligible, he

was one of the first ones in Reno to go up and
take the test. He was dying for the moment.
He went up there, and he was all prepared. The
judge told him, “Well, you take these things,
and you go home and study them.”

“I don’t need that; I’ll take the test now.”

And he did good?

RN: Yes. And he passed.

Since your mother talked to you in Japanese,
she probably kept in her heart her own Japanese
values and taught Japanese values to you.
Could you give some examples of what kind of
Japanese values you think your mother taught
you?

RN: Oh, my mother was different from
my dad. My mother valued the Japanese
culturEN: the things that the Japanese value,
the way that Japanese look at things, the things
they do, the way she did them when she was
a girl in Japan. She placed a lot of value on
that. Speaking politely to your elders—you
must always respect your elders. Be they
right or wrong, you’ve got to respect them
as elders. What you do after they’re gone is
your business, but while you’re confronting
an elder, you be respectful to him. She always
preached about love for your brothers, your
sisters—always looking out for them. I guess
that’s normal in any family, and, well, that’s
the extent of it. Maybe there are a lot of
other things, too, but what I remember about
her was, always be good to other people. It
was like taking a page out of the Bible, the
Christian Bible. “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.” That’s what
she always professed. But above all, she said,
“Be kind to your sisters and your brothers.”
And she said, “If something displeases you,
just turn your other cheek.”

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

I guess I was my mother’s favorite, because
every time, even after my wife Betty and I
were married, if Id come over to visit with
her, which I did often, she always insisted
that I stay and have a bite to eat. She would
prepare me something special. And I heard
Betty telling Pop, “I love to watch. I enjoy
cooking for Roy, and I love to watch him eat,
because he makes everything seem so tasty.
When he’s eating, he makes everything look
so good.”

I think my mother brought the best out
in me. She loved her kids. In 1939, before the
war, she was all set to go back to Japan to visit
her family: her brothers, and her mother, who
was still alive, and her dad. One brother had
already died. She only had two brothers. She
had two brothers and two sisters. Her two
sisters died several years ago, and one brother
died, so she had one brother left. So it was all
set for her to go back to Japan. She had her
visa and everything all prepared, all set. She
was going to depart San Francisco on a certain
date. She couldn’t go; she couldn’t make it. She
couldn’t leave her kids behind her. [laughter]
Isn’t that strange? My dad, oh, he talked to
her and talked to her. She said, “No. What if
something happens to me over there, and my
kids are over here?” And she couldn’t go and
had to get a refund, [laughter] We all tried
to talk her into going, but no, she started
bawling, [laughter] She cried and cried. She
cried on one hand for not being able to see
her brother, and she cried here because, “I
don’t want to leave you.” [laughter] She was a
very tender-hearted person, but she could be
tough, too, if we did anything wrong.

Did she cook Japanese food a lot?

RN: Yes. I miss her cooking, [laughter] I
sure miss her cooking. Betty tries. She learned
from my mother. She learned how to cook

rice, and she learned from my mother how
to make tsukemono (Japanese pickles), but
not like my mother. The flavoring and all, it’s
not like my mother’s. There’s a lot of Japanese
foods that I miss. But my little woman, she
tries. She makes sukiyaki for me; she boils
noodles for me, but she can’t flavor the
noodles the way my mother did. You know
why? Because she doesn’t use katsuo bushi
(dried bonito) and stuff like that. She uses
bouillon cubes, [laughter] A big difference!
Or she might broil or brown pork chops, and
then she can’t season them the way that I’m
accustomed to eating them. I am used to my
mother’s cooking, after all these years, and I
loved my mother’s food. I guess all children
love their mother’s cooking. She was a good
cook.

So, she kept contact with her parents and
relatives over in Japan until she passed away?

RN: Yes, yes. Betty, was mama alive when
my cousins came over here?

EN: No.

RN: No. She had already passed away.
That’s right, my cousins . . . was that Yasuo’s
mother that came with them?

EN: Yes.

RN: Yes, after my mother died, her
sister-in-law and her nephew and a family
friend came over and visited with my dad. I
thought, oh, dear, it would have been so nice
if my mother had been still alive, because she
wrote to them all the time. Oh, she was always
writing letters. I don’t think my dad missed
Japan so much. I don’t think he did, because
he left there when he was so young, but my
mother was twenty years old when she left.

Roy Nishiguchi

So she used to talk about Japan quite a bit.
She used to talk about Japan. She would sing
little Japanese songs, and I know she missed
Japan.

Did your father keep contact with his relatives
in Wakayama?

RN: My dad’s side of the family are all
gone. He lost a brother in the Philippines,
and he lost another brother in Austria. They
all died of sickness. He lost his father at sea
when he was still there. As a boy, he lost his
father. He told me one day, “Dad went out
in a fishing boat with others, and his boat
never came back.” So his dad lost his life on
the ocean, and his mother passed away, so
he had nobody over there, but my mother
did. Her brothers passed away, both of
them—the elder one and the younger one,
and then she had her sister-in-law, and she
had the nephews. Yasuo was my mother’s
nephew, the son of the oldest boy in her
family, who was my mother’s oldest brother,
the one just under my mother. Yasuo was
his son, and he came over here. He brought
his whole family over, and they spent about
a week here. I don’t hear from them any
more. I used to get letters from them, but
something happened, I think, because of
my ignorance of Japanese customs. I think
that’s what caused it. Like when my dad
passed away, Yasuo who is my cousin, sent
my sister an amount of money. That’s a
Japanese custom, isn’t it?

Yes.

RN: And it’s also a Japanese custom,
I think, that the oldest take care of the
responsibilities, isn’t it?

Yes. Usually, the first boy.

RN: OK. Now over here, it was different
with our family. You see, when my mother
and dad were still alive, they lived with my
two sisters who went in together and bought
a house. They bought a house in their names,
but they bought it for Mom and Pop, see.
They bought it for Mother and Dad, and
it was just over here, about three blocks
down the street, on Gridley Avenue. So my
dad and mother lived with my sisters, and
when this sister got married, she moved
off. This sister got married and moved off.
So they were left with the youngest sister,
who was married in the meantime, too,
but they stayed there, and they took care
of my mother and dad, because they were
in the same house. So my mother and dad
came to rely on her. By the way, I think she’s
the one in the family that has the most up
here, anyway, you know, this sister, but my
mother and dad shouldered her with all
the responsibilities, and she handled it; she
took care of them. So when my dad passed
away, my sister notified them (the relatives
in Japan) of his passing, and Yasuo sent her a
sum of money. So I asked my sister, “Well, I
think I’d better write Yasuo and acknowledge
it.”

She said, “No, you don’t have to. I already
did. I already acknowledged it in all of our
names,” she said.

So I said, “Oh, OK. I hope that will stand.”
But Yasuo stopped writing to me. He stopped
writing to me. He used to send me Christmas
cards; he used to write letters to me, but he
stopped. So I told my sister then, “Well, I
should have acknowledged it and taken care
of things, because,” I said, “now he’s stopped
writing to me. But,” I said, “I don’t give a
damn.” I said, “If that’s the reason why he quit,
so be it.”

Well, does he still write to your sister?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

RN: Oh, he sends her greeting cards, I
think. I don’t know. I haven’t inquired about
that.

It is unusual to stop sending greeting cards to
you because you didn’t acknowledge the money
he sent, so I wonder if he’s sick or something.

RN: Well, see, Yasuo was the oldest in
his family, and when his dad died, I guess he
handled everything, so I guess when my dad
died, he expected me to handle everything,
but it wasn’t that way with us. Like I said
before, my mother and dad left my baby sister,
as I call her, and they left everything up to her.
They relied on her to take care of everything.
I mean, I contributed toward their support,
because even up to the day that my mom died,
Betty and I used to contribute thirty dollars
a month. We’d give them thirty dollars a
month, come hell or high water, thirty bucks a
month. Then, even after my mom died, I took
it up to the house to give it to father, and he
said, “Roy, Mom is gone now, and you don’t
have to give it to me any more.” He said, “My
railroad retirement check (which finally came
through) will take care of me.”

But I thought it was strange that Yasuo
stopped writing to me; I thought it was
strange that he stopped even sending me
a Christmas card, but I thought, “Well he’s
angry at me about something, so let him
stew in his own anger.” That’s a hell of a way
to feel, but that’s the way I feel now. He just
quit me cold turkey. I think Japan is changing
in a way, isn’t it?

Yes. Very quickly.

RN: I think my cousin, Yasuo, who is
the oldest, is of the old school. I think he is.
I don’t think he can see beyond the age-old
traditions, the old, old-time traditions.

But I’m so fouled up in all the Japanese
culture. I don’t have any Japanese culture.
I’ve lost it all, if I had any. My mom used to
try to make a little rub off on me, but I don’t
know. I think of Japan and Japanese things.
Like when I was up at the garage sale this
morning, just before it was time for you to
come, I saw a place mat over there that had
little wheat, straw, bits of artistry—made in
Japan. I see things like that, and I see these
bonsai plants, and all that, and I think about
it. All these things that Mom used to try to
teach me, some of it rubbed in. But, God, I’m
a barbarian now. I’m not a barbarian from the
standpoint of not being well mannered and
being discourteous, but I’ve lost the contact
with the finer things in life. I guess that’s
because I don’t circulate much. Since I’ve
gotten old, I don’t circulate; I don’t get around
and mingle. I don’t go to the JACL meetings.
I don’t go where the other Niseis congregate.
But when I drive past the university there, it
strikes me every now and then. I see students
that I swear are Japanese. I know they’re
Japanese. Like the other day, my wife and I
headed for the bank, and we drove past the
university, and I told her, “There’s a Japanese
girl.” I’ll bet she’s knocking down good
grades, [laughter]

Oh, that’s one thing that my dad and
mother both expected of all their children:
when you go to school, you’re going to school
to learn, not to have fun, not to mingle with
your friends; you’re going there to study—
something they always pushed on us. I hear a
lot of people saying this. In fact, back there in
Utah, they said, “Those Japanese kids are sure
intelligent.” It’s not that the Japanese kids are
intelligent; it’s that their parents are pushing
them. Japanese parents aren’t as easy going as
the Caucasian parents.

That’s true.

Roy Nishiguchi

RN: My dad used to tell me, “I want you
to get good grades, because you’re Japanese.
I want you to stand out. I don’t want other
people to think that you’re a dummy.” But they
were very, very devout, education minded, I
guess, [laughter]

Well, I think that’s all I needed to ask you.

RN: You have nothing more to ask me?

Well, based on the questions that I’m supposed
to ask you, I guess.

RN: Oh, you’ve asked me everything that
you are supposed to ask me?

Yes.

RN: Did I pass the test? [laughter] Well
this old brain of mine is foggy. I mean, it’s
like I can’t... I don’t think too clearly. Don’t
you get this way when you get older. I can
remember things of a week ago, but I can’t
remember what I did an hour ago. It’s weird.
I came in here this morning, came in to get
the keys for my truck, so I could drive it, and
I got right in here and forgot what I was after.

George Oshima

Noriko Kunitomi: Today, November 6, 1992,
I am interviewing Mr. George Oshima at his
house in Reno, Nevada. In this interview we
will discuss Japanese people in Nevada and
also in the United States who came from Japan
to the United States before World War II. Mr.
Oshima, does the Oral History Program of the
University of Nevada have your permission to
make public the tapes and transcripts of this
interview?

George Oshima: Yes, I believe that
paper says that.

Thank you. First of all, I want to start with
general questions, like when and where and
which part of Japan did your family come from?

Both parents are from Hiroshima.

Do you know when?

I’m not quite certain, but my father
immigrated here in 1905; I’m not certain of
this. My mother landed in Hawaii, part of the

United States, in 1912. She was in Hawaii for
a while.

Do you know why they got married in
California. Did they meet each other in
California?

I don’t have the papers, but I believe they
were married in Sacramento, because that’s
where my father was for some time. He was
in Hawaii for awhile and then he went to
Sacramento.

Do you know when they got married?

I don’t have that information. No, I don’t
have the papers or anything.

Did your parents ever tell you the reasons why
they had to come to the United States?

Oh, I don’t think they had to come; I don’t
think they had to come to the United States.
I believe that, like a lot of the other Japanese
nationals, they felt things were going to be

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

better here—to improve themselves. I assume
that; I don’t know that, and I don’t know what
they did before. Like my mother, when she came
over, I think she was only about twenty-one.
So they were fairly young. So I think they were
looking for opportunities. Now, I don’t know
what their folks did in Hiroshima; that I don’t
know. I should know, but I don’t know, [laughter]

My parents are from Hiroshima.

Oh, are they?

Yes. Could you tell me when your family came
to Nevada?

Yes, the family moved from Stockton to
Reno in 1935.

Do you know why they come to Nevada in
1935?

Yes, because my mother’s sister and her
husband had a laundry here, and they were going
to go back to Japan, and so they asked my dad and
mother to come up and take over the laundry.

In California did your parents have a laundry
business?

My dad was in the cleaning business in
Stockton.

How about your mother? Did she do something?

Well, she helped, like all Japanese families,
but she also taught at our Japanese school,
Abokoki Japanese school. She taught Japanese
there to the kids, to youngsters. So she was a
part-time school teacher.

Which language did you speak with your
parents?

I think when we were young in the
house, we spoke Japanese, but eventually, as
we got older, it was a mixture. Our parents
understood a certain amount of English, so
it was fine. We spoke Japanese at home, but
not completely, like in Japan, [laughter]

Could you tell me whether or not your parents
tried to keep Japanese heritage in your family
in the United States?

Oh, I think they showed us some of the
traditional things. Well, I assume they were
traditional. They didn’t try to hold back
anything—when we were children, especially.
So I would say partly, yes. I think we were
taught some of the things about Japan that
we’ve retained today.

Could you give me examples of those?

Well, New Year’s was a big time for the
Japanese. The women would cook the things,
and the men would go around New Year’s
visiting, and the wives would have to stay
and entertain the other friends that would
come over. Oh, things of that type. I think in
Stockton they had a Hiroshima convention,
and they would have picnics and things,
which is maybe more customized, because
people tend to be together from common
interests. We are not really geared into many
of the Japanese customs, but one of the
traditions was church activities—festivals,
and certain things.

Church means Buddhist church? So that means
you are Buddhist?

Well, let’s see. We were supposed to be
baptized. I wasn’t, but my two sisters were.
I have three sisters, and two of them were
baptized, because the parents were strong

George Oshima

church people, but since we moved here, of
course, we’ve gotten away from that. Well, at
least I consider myself a Christian now, and
she is Christian.

Do you keep Japanese traditions here right
now?

In what way?

Like your parents kept some Japanese
traditions — like eating Japanese food,
and doing Japanese hobbies, and teaching
Japanese ideals and values to the children?
Now the new generation is starting their own
families. Do you teach the kind of Japanese
values, which were taught by your parents,
to your children?

I don’t think so. If we did, we didn’t
do it intentionally, but since my wife and
I know some things about the Japanese
family, and the children grew up with us,
they accepted it, but we didn’t purposely say,
“Well, this is what you’ve got to know about
our background,” or their grandparents’
background. We didn’t do it, especially, but
I think they learned. In fact, some of our
grandchildren now are interested in the
Japanese culture and background. Several
of them are really interested. So in a way, I
think, it’s rubbing off on them, but we’re not
giving our thoughts to prepare them to know
a lot about our background.

If I meet them, I’m not going to see any Japanese
elements from them? Do they eat Japanese food
often?

Yes, they do. Our children like Japanese
food, [laughter] Yes, we eat Japanese food
regularly, and my wife is pretty good in
cooking Japanese.

Did you learn how to cook Japanese food from
your mother?

EUNICE OSHIMA (MRS. GEORGE OSHIMA):
Not a lot, because when you are young you
don’t really watch, but some recipes I learned
growing up [laughter] That’s how you learn.
Sometimes you wish you did pay more
attention.

Did your parents intend to stay here
permanently, or just a short time and then go
home to Japan?

Well, I don’t think we ever discussed that
with our parents. I don’t know about you,
but a lot of what we call the Issei, our parents
generation, came over thinking that this
was the land of opportunity, which I think
it was, compared to where they were from,
and maybe they came over to make a small
fortune and go back. That’s what my uncle did,
my wife’s sister did. They went back to Japan.
That’s how we moved to Reno. But our parents
never indicated that they were going to ever
move back, and I don’t think my father-in-law
ever thought of it. I think he missed it.

E: They never talked that much about
their childhood, about their life, but I am sure
they did come over thinking they’d go back
some day.

Do you know if that’s why your parents left
Japan?

E: Yes, probably. I think there were a lot
of families that did that, left their kids, and
were going to send for them or bring them
here or go back to them. It didn’t work out
that way. [laughter] It wasn’t as easy making
a living, so they weren’t able to afford it. So
they never did. It was funny, they never speak

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

about how sad they are, or how their life was
before in Japan. They were very quiet about
that. We never asked them.

Are there any relatives of your parents here?

You are talking about my parents and their
relatives? Well, on my father’s side there were
eight children, four boys and four girls. The
youngest boy stayed in Japan. Most of them
were in Hawaii. Over here on the mainland,
there was my dad’s brother in Stockton, and
his sister was in Woodland. They are all
gone now. So there were three over on the
mainland, four in Honolulu or in that area,
and one stayed in Japan to look after the
property, I guess, [laughter]

E: Didn’t your Stockton uncle come here
first?

That I can’t tell you. I think he came after
my dad, because he’s younger. You see dad was
the oldest in the family. So I think he came
later, but not too much later, because when I
was growing up I knew the family pretty well.

E: It’s too bad we didn’t ask our parents
a lot of things. Today we wish we had.

You see, on my mother’s side, this one
sister was here. Now, when she came over,
I don’t know. So she and her husband had
the laundry here. There were others. I don’t
know when my other aunt came over on
my mother’s side. In fact, we don’t have
much information, except we know them,
[laughter]

Did you guys keep contact, like writing letters?

After they left here, we lost contact. Soon
after they left, my mother passed away. My

mother passed away in 1943, so she is the one
that would have been writing to her sisters.

What about on your father’s side?

Father’s side, there were cousins in Hawaii,
but we’ve lost touch with the relatives in Japan.

E: Grandpa went a couple of times to
visit in Japan.

Yes, but he’s buried up here—both mother
and dad are. It depends on when they passed
away, too.

E: But he kept in touch with the ones
here—his sister and brother.

Well, even in Hawaii. He went to Hawaii
several times—with two sisters and a brother
in Hawaii. He had a lot of relatives there. Well,
it’s our relatives, too. So he stayed in touch
with them, but we don’t. I mean, we’ve slowly
come apart. Some cousins we were in touch
with.

Could you tell me about how your parents’
social life, and also your generation’s social life
in Nevada, in a small community?

How was our social life?

In a small community including Caucasians
and Mexicans and Italians, all those people,
how and what kind of communications or
problems you had?

Well, naturally, we don’t have problems
with those whom we call friends. Otherwise,
we wouldn’t be friends. We haven’t felt too
much in the way of discrimination. We are
fairly well accepted, but we are retired now. At
the time we were working, we were part of the

George Oshima

community. We got along well with everyone.
Very few people looked down on us for being
minorities.

Did you keep your parents’ business after they
retired?

Oh, no.

So you were different?

Well, after the war things changed quite
a bit, although Nevada wasn’t evacuated like
California. When I was twenty-three, my
mother passed away, and I went into the
service. Then my father sold the business
to another Japanese family by the name of
Okomoto, and they are no longer here. So the
business didn’t continue in the family.

Do you remember before World War II, before
your father sold the business to the other Japanese
family, were there any difficulties keeping the
business going in a small community, because
some people looked down upon the minorities?
If they don’t come, why, they just spread bad
rumors in the neighborhoods, and those people
don’t come to the business, either?

Gee, I can’t answer that too well. My folks’
business was well accepted here. They knew
it was being run by Japanese nationals. The
owners were Japanese nationals, but up until
I went into the service, and Dad sold the
place, there wasn’t much discrimination. I’m
sure some people quit becoming customers,
because of the nationality background, but it
wasn’t so bad that you could feel it. So in this
small community I don’t know if things like
that happened as much as in other places, like
in California. So I didn’t feel like my dad was a
monstrous sight after the war started, because
they know you, and as long as you had built

up a good character they didn’t do too much
against us.

What about in school?

E: Well, I guess I was still in school, but
I didn’t feel anything there. He was in college.

So nobody changed attitude towards you?

E: Not knowingly. I mean, it didn’t show.

Oh, I’m sure there was some that didn’t
like us, but they didn’t make it so obvious
that it made you uncomfortable. Sure, once
in a while somebody would call you by a
derogatory name, but it didn’t happen that
often. This was a big community then. We had
friends and all, and we’d do things together. So
you might say we were very well assimilated
in this community. Maybe not one hundred
percent, but we were very happy with our
treatment.

What kind of social life did women have, back
before World War II, I guess, your parents’
generation? Your mother often went out to
community activities?

My mother was quiet, and like any family,
when you had a business back in those days,
the family generally all worked a certain
amount of time. She liked my dad to go to
Japan, and my dad went to Hawaii several
times to visit relatives. My mother was always
concerned about us and running the business,
looking after the business, so she would let
him go. So she was kind of to herself quite a
bit. Well, not to herself—she was with us—but
she didn’t enjoy going out. Maybe she did, but
she never expressed that she wanted to be out.
When Admiral Byrd’s plane came in, I took
her up for her first airplane ride down here.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

That was years ago. The Issei or Nisei —there
were quite a few here, because her parents
and other families were here—they would
get together for social get-togethers every so
often, but not once a month, or not that often.
So if you want to know if they took part in
some of the activities here, not too much. The
Isseis themselves would get together, but not
with Caucasians or activities that involved
their friends’ races.

You came here in 1935?

I was in high school.

A high school student from California, where
you were surrounded by a lot of Japanese
people. What kind of friends did you have when
you came to Nevada, which did not have a lot
of Japanese population?

Well, in the beginning, you don’t have any
friends, but I was more fortunate than my
sisters, because I was in school. They were out
of school. See, I’m the youngest. So once you
start going to school, you start making friends,
and so that turned out well. I had good friends,
and I had casual friends. Oh, I missed the
friends in Stockton, because we were in kind of
a Japanese-type thing. I missed them, but then
you make friends here, and before you know
it, you settle down here. You miss the others,
but they’re good for visits now. But you make
your own friends here. From that standpoint, I
think they accepted me, and maybe it’s because
there weren’t that many Orientals here, either.
There were just a few in school.

What kind of career did you develop after you
graduated from school?

I went to the University of Nevada three
years; I didn’t graduate, because I was in the

service. When I came back, I went to work for
the county, and in 1958 I was made Washoe
County Engineer. Then, let’s see, 1967, I
became Public Works Director for Washoe
County. So I retired from the county.

Did you choose that career based on your
interest?

I always wanted to be an engineer, so I
was taking engineering up at Nevada. Then,
after I came out of the service, the semester
had already started, so I was employed by the
county, and I have stayed with them ever since,
with the county engineering department.
After I got registered as a professional
engineer, then the county engineer left, so
they appointed me as county engineer. So
I was very fortunate. I was with the county
thirty-three years, and then I retired.

What about Eunice?

Well, during the war, she was a nurse’s aid.
She volunteered, because she didn’t want to go
into the service like we do today. Then, after
I got out, we were married in the latter part
of 1946, and then, when we got the children I
said, “You’ve got to look after the children.” So
she quit working to raise the children. So after
that, of course, she was employed in various
places, but she was more like a housewife.
Maybe that’s part of the Japanese tradition.
You raise the children. The mothers raise the
children.

So you asked Eunice to stay home, knowing that
was more Japanese tradition than American?

I think in those days, it was also traditional
for an American family; the wives didn’t work.
The man was the breadwinner and worked,
and the wife took care of the house and the

George Oshima

children. So maybe that part is similar. Now,
in Japan the women are assigned to look for
work, but in the past they would always stay
at home, and the husbands got to be out and
around. So it’s changing there. So that’s all I
hear, as soon as we start to get children. Well,
that’s my philosophy anyway: somebody
should raise them. When they come home
from school, go to school—she took care of all
of that. She has PTA work, Parents Teachers
Association. She was good that way. She’s a
good mother.

So she was active in PTA. Do any of your
relatives work in a regular company?

No.

Well, could you tell what kind of jobs they have?

Well, my uncle in Stockton had a fish
market, and after graduation he went back to
Stockton, and he had a little shop in a grocery
store, in the back—well, the fish area. So he
stayed with that until he passed away. My aunt
was married to a man that was in ranching;
they would lease a ranch and work that. Now,
I can’t tell you what my aunt and uncle did in
Hawaii. I don’t know what they did.

What about your brothers and sisters?

I don’t have any brothers, just three
sisters. The oldest one was married to a
man that was, for several years, in charge of
the language school at Monterey. He was a
director at one time. One sister, after World
War II, tried various things and then went
to work for the post office and retired. She
was a part-time bookkeeper. She was hired
as a part-time bookkeeper. One sister is a
full-time bookkeeper. She’s still working.
She was divorced years ago, I think, but she’s

doing well. So that’s all I can tell you about
my family.

Now, Eunice’s two brothers that lived here
are both gone. One sister is still living here,
but she’s retired. She had a flower shop. First
she had a beauty shop, and when she got
married she and her husband went into the
flower business and did well, but he’s gone. He
passed away. She’s retired. I don’t know what
else to tell you, because I don’t know too much
about the other relatives, [laughter] I have a
cousin in Hawaii that does well in insurance,
but I don’t know what each individual did.
Most of them are now retired, of course,
[laughter]

Could you tell me what kind of living conditions
your parents had in Nevada, when you first
came here?

Well, until he got established here, even
though he took over a laundry that was a
going business.... We finally bought a home,
and so we all grew up there. Eunice’s dad was
a farmer, and he had about ten acres, so they
lived in what you’d call a ranch-stock family.
None of us are really what you’d call rich, but
we weren’t starving either. But we had to work
hard, to a certain extent. So living conditions,
I’d say, well, average; maybe it could be below
average, because we weren’t wealthy.

Did you have to help your parents often after
school?

No. Now, I can’t speak for Eunice’s side
of the family, but we didn’t have to help.
Maybe I stayed out and worked, so I could
save some money when I was going up at
the university—not high school, but the
university. But I worked in the laundry, and
I’d go back to school. I went back to school
after one year. So we helped, but not so that

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

we could keep a business going, or anything.
My folks had other workers there. If I wanted
to stay out a year and work, it was OK, you
know, [laughter] But if I went some place else
to work, it wouldn’t have hurt the family any,
if that’s what you mean—did we work to help
the family?

Yes. I just interviewed a Mr. Buddy Fujii.

Yes.

He said he always helped his father with the
gardening business. Was your father’s business
a kind of family business?

Well, he had about six employees working,
and then my mother worked, and my sister
helped. But it’s not helping; there were
salaries. They were working for my dad and
mother. One sister moved to San Francisco;
it didn’t matter, because the family business
was doing well, so we didn’t have to pitch
in. Now in the beginning, though, well, like
Buddy and his brother, I think they all pitched
in, to make sure that they had a nursery. And
in their spare time—I guess, when you grow
things you can help anytime, and it’s welcome
help—so much to do.

Do you know what kind of people were hired
by your parents to work in the business?

Well, they were mostly Japanese and one
Filipino. And he went back to the Philippines.
But they were all Japanese Issei. See my
mother’s two sisters . . . one owned it, and
she and her husband worked in the laundry.
But they were gone after my folks took over,
because both my mother’s two sisters and
their husbands went back to Japan. But there
was a few Japanese here that worked there
for years. I don’t know where they are now.

They’re probably gone, because they were
Isseis. They were Japanese nationals, because
at that time they couldn’t be citizens, anyway.

So your parents died here without having any
citizenship?

Oh, my father did. See, my mother passed
away first. After the war, they changed the
immigration laws, so you could become
naturalized. So my dad went to school and
got naturalized.

Could you tell me about school life, not in
college, but in high school and junior high?
What kind of life style did you have in school?

Well, I don’t know what you mean by life
style.

Well, what did you do in school, or after school?
What did you do with your friends? What kind
of friends did you hang around with, and what
kind of topics did you guys talk about all the
time?

Well, I assume that we lived a normal
high school life, went to football games. I was
on the rifle team. I was never in any sports
activities; I wasn’t big enough. We all used
to get together—a group of kids that got to
be my friends. I joined the DeMolays—that’s
the beginning of becoming a Mason—except
I didn’t become a Mason, because I was in
the service, and my interests fell away. But a
DeMolay was a junior group, and my friends
were there, and they asked me to join, which
I did. So, I don’t know that we went to any
dances, because, well, for one thing, I knew
more boys than girls in school. So maybe the
school activities didn’t do too much, but I
don’t think I missed out on anything, because
I made some pretty good friends in school.

George Oshima

I have a question. Your wife is Japanese, and
among second generation Japanese Americans,
there are very few people who got married to
Caucasians or different race people. Did you
think about marrying a person of a different
race when you were young?

No, I didn’t.

Did you want to marry a Japanese, or did you
think you had to?

Well, it never occurred to me to not marry
a person of the same race. Well, similar to
what I mentioned about school dances, her
older sister was in my same class. The only
time I asked her out was to go to the senior
prom, because I couldn’t ask. Well, I didn’t
know enough other girls to ask. Maybe they
wouldn’t even go with me then. I don’t know.
I never tried, so I can’t tell you, but I would
say that being raised in Stockton, where there
were a lot of Japanese, a lot of boys and girls
my age, that it never occurred to me to try
to ask, well, let’s say, a Caucasian girl to go to
the movies or anything. Never occurred to
me. Today, things like that are maybe more
difficult for youngsters now, but it didn’t
bother me. I missed friends when they would
talk about a dance coming up, and I knew I
was not going to go. In a way, you adjust, but it
never made an impression on me. That’s why I
can’t talk to you about it, because it wasn’t that
big a thing, not so important that I am angry,
or not angry, or whatever. It didn’t affect me at
all. I can’t speak for all the others, [laughter]

Could you tell me if, after your mother died,
your father’s life style changed?

Well, a fortunate thing, I think, is that the
Japanese that were here—there weren’t that
many—were always getting together after

there was no business to be concerned about
and everything. They’re all about the same age
and not working for a living any more, that is,
no daily work, nothing to keep them down,
so they got interested in this singing, and so
they traveled to California and to the different
communities where they had conventions or
get-togethers. They got together here almost
about once a month or so, had dinner at one
place, or they’d take turns. So I think they
kind of enjoyed themselves. At least that’s the
impression I have, that they did enjoy getting
together every so often. My dad liked fishing, so
he’d go fishing. So I think, overall, their twilight
years were kind of nice. And then the grandkids
would come along, and so he would enjoy the
grandchildren. I think he treated them better
than he treated me, maybe, [laughter] As long as
the family stayed together, I think they enjoyed
it. And the friends enjoyed it. The friends, of
course, started to pass away, but those that were
living would get together, and I think it was
entertaining for them. Now, I can’t tell you too
much, but like my dad and my wife’s dad, I know
they practiced. They really enjoyed that singing. I
can’t say they were real good singers, but I think
the community here was pretty nice for them.
Maybe they missed not seeing a lot of Japanese,
but they never said that they were lonely.

Well, that was my last question.

Well, I hope somebody has a little insight in
that this area was not bad. I think the community
treated the Japanese very well, over all.

I got the impression from you that it was.

Yes, I think so.

Thank you very much.

Oh, you’re welcome.

Ida Fukui Weiss

Noriko Kunitomi: Today, November 9, 1992,
I’m interviewing Mrs. Ida Weiss at her house
in Reno, Nevada. The interview will be about
Japanese people in Nevada who came to the
United States before World War II. The Oral
History Program of the University of Nevada
has your consent to make available to the public
the tapes and transcripts of the interview we
do here today?

Ida Fukui Weiss: Yes.

Thank you. I want to start with general
information. Your parents are the first
generation who came to the United States?

Yes.

Do you know which part of Japan they came
from?

They’re from Wakayama, Japan.

Did they get married before they came to the
States?

Yes.

Do you know why they came to the United States?

Probably, to seek a better life, because
Japan was very poor in those days.

Do you know when they came here?

My mother came to this country in 1910;
my father probably came a little earlier, but I
don’t know when.

Do you know how they came? Did they know
somebody in this country already?

They probably did. I don’t know.

After they came to the United States, did they
keep some kind of contact with relatives in Japan?

Oh, yes. I still do.

Oh, I see. Do you understand, or do you read
Japanese?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

No. I have to take my letters to somebody
to have them read them, but when I write, I
write in English, because I’m sure they take
theirs to somebody to have them read, too.

I see. Do you have any cousins or relatives in
this country?

Yes. I have a brother. He came yesterday to see
me. I have a cousin in California, several in fact.
I have a cousin here in Nevada, out at Lovelock

Your fathers or mother’s?

Both. My father’s cousin is from Lovelock,
and my mother’s cousin lives in California.

Do you know if either of your parents’ brothers
and sisters came to the United States?

I don’t know.

Did your parents come to Nevada straight
from Japan?

Yes.

They didn’t stay in California at all?

They may have, but I’m not sure.

What kind of jobs or careers did your parents
have in Nevada?

Well, my father had a laundry, because
everybody—the Oriental people—all had
laundries and dry cleaning places.

In Reno?

No, in Carson City. My brother still lives
in Carson City. I was born and raised in
Carson City.

I see. Could you tell me a little bit about Carson
City when you were young?

Well, it was a very small city; it only had
about three thousand people there. We were
the only Japanese people there, and I guess,
in those days, there was some prejudice, but
we made some really good friends that were
influential and are well known now. Some of
them I have kept my good friends and they
have helped me. My attorney is somebody
that I knew from my teenage years, and he
has been very helpful and very kind to me.
We still keep up a good relationship, but other
people have more or less scattered, gone.

You just mentioned prejudice; did you have
difficulty?

Not that I can really say, but during the
war was very hard, even though my brother
was in the United States Army. It was hard,
because nobody wanted to give me a job, but
there was a man that did give me a job, and
I worked for him for about ten years. Then
I passed the civil service test, and I went
to work for the Veterans Administration
Hospital here. Even then, some people did
not want to hire me, even though you have
the qualifications, you’ve passed the test and
all that, but I managed to work myself up to
where I was a supervisor when I left. I found
out that if you’re Japanese, you have to work a
little harder or be a little bit smarter than the
next guy.

What kind of education did you get?

I went to high school, and then I went to
business college. I didn’t go to college like you
are going.

Where was the business college?

Ida Fukui Weiss

San Francisco and Reno.

At the time you graduated from business school,
your parents still had their business in Carson
City?

Yes.

You did not want to take your father’s position
after he retired?

Well, no, because my father had to give
up his laundry business when my brother
went into the army. There was just my brother
and myself. My brother went into the army.
We gave our business to my cousins from
California, because they had to evacuate from
California. You’ve heard of the evacuation? So
they had to move out of California, so they
came and took over the laundry and cleaners.
Then we moved to Reno.

So after you moved to Reno, your parents
started a new business?

No, no. My parents retired. They didn’t
work any more. I went to work, and then
I worked for this one person for ten years
and then went to work for the Veterans
Administration.

Did you go to a different school for that to
study?

No, I worked in administration; I didn’t
work as a nurse or anything like that. When
you work for the government, there’s lots and
lots of paper work. So there’s a lot of people
pushing pencils over there.

I don’t know how much you remember, but
could you tell me about your parent’s social life
when they were living in Carson City?

Well, we would go to different towns close
by, where there were Japanese; they just mixed
with the Japanese. In some of your other
interviews you probably learned that. Even
Nisei, during the war we were very close.
Now, we don’t even see each other hardly,
anymore. I haven’t seen Mr. Ayoama in two
years, I don’t think. We don’t see each other.
He’s a very interesting man.

So your parents and you and your brother did
not really intermingle with different racial ... ?

Yes, we did. I am married to a Caucasian,
[laughter] How much integration can you get?
[laughter]

Could you give me examples of what kind of
activities you guys had in your community?

Well, we used to go bowling, and go to
picnics and wienie roasts, and the kind of
thing, maybe, you do in school.

But what about during the war time?

That’s the kind of things we did, picnics,
wienie roasts, bowling, potluck dinners.
You’ve heard of JACL [Japanese-American
Citizens League] ?

Yes.

That’s how JACL got started. It was in
1949, I think, that it got started, because I
had a friend that worked for JACL in San
Lrancisco. That fellow, Joe Marsoaka, came
to Reno, because he was pushing the senator
from Nevada, McCarran—trying to lobby
him into passing the law where the Japanese
could become citizens. That’s how he came to
Reno, and he stayed at our home, the Lukui
house, and then decided to form a JACL here.

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

That’s how it started in 1949. Then, of course,
that law did pass, and the citizens—the Issei —
could become citizens, but before that, they
couldn’t become citizens, and lots of people
would say, “Your parents have lived here a
long time. If they liked it so much, why didn’t
they become citizens?” They couldn’t until
after the war. That’s how it started, Senator
Walters from Nebraska, I think, with Senator
McCarran. Do you know that one? In your
interviews nobody mentioned JACL?

Well, JACL—they didn’t really say why.

Well, that’s how it got started.

What kind of things did you guys do with the
non-Japanese? Your family was probably the
only Japanese family in Carson City, so you
guys had to have different ethnic people as
neighbors.

Yes, Caucasians.

What did you guys do with them socially?

Same things; played cards or something
like that.

Did they change attitudes towards you guys
when the war started?

Oh, yes. You’re too young to know about
the war. It was very hard on the Japanese.
My mother would say, “If we hadn’t come to
this country, we would not be subjecting our
children to all of this.”

But I still felt that this country was better.
Being in Japan, you get bombed and all that,
and they got burned out. This way, we were
still sort of restricted. We couldn’t leave and
go some place without approval. You couldn’t
move around as freely, but there were people

in Carson that I grew up with that were very
kind, and they would sign, saying, “We will
vouch for this person. They can go to Reno or
wherever.” But I made some very good friends.
I don’t think you ever heard of Paul Laxalt; he
was the governor of Nevada, and he became
a senator. Well, we went to school about the
same time, and he still remembered me. I ran
into him in Reno and he remembered me after
all those years. And, as I say, my attorney,
Clark Guild, is very prominent in Reno, and
we are still good friends. I met my husband at
the V.A., because he worked in finance, and I
worked in another department.

My mother was of the old, old world;
not like you young people. She didn’t believe
in inter-marriage. And so I took care of my
mother; that’s the Japanese custom, too. You
don’t stick them in a nursing home. She didn’t
speak the language, anyway. So what can you
do? So my husband and I, we went together
for fourteen years, because my mother didn’t
believe in mixed marriages. After my mother
died, we waited six months or so, and then we
got married, but we’ve been married twenty-
two years come June. That’s a long time,
especially the way marriages are these days,
and we get along fine.

So your mother could not speak English at all,
even though she lived in this country?

No, not very well.

How could you communicate with her?

Oh, I spoke Japanese.

Oh, I see.

I can’t speak it now, but when my mother
was living we spoke Japanese. She was ninety-
three when she died.

Ida Fukui Weiss

It’s interesting to hear, because I interviewed
six more Japanese people before our interview
now, and they spoke very little Japanese, even
when they were young. When they were young
they, of course, understood what their parents
said, but they did not speak Japanese.

Oh, no. I spoke Japanese.

So your parents did not try to make the children
American? They tried to keep the Japanese
heritage more?

Oh, yes. I still refer back to our culture and
our heritage a lot. My mother used to have a
lot of sayings that she used to tell me. Like,
one of the things that I think is very missing
these days is giri (obligation).

Giri?

Yes. In English, you would say, “Is that
gratitude?” Enryo (hesitate or abstain) —
people don’t enryo any more. A lot of those
things my mother used to teach me.

So are you Buddhist?

No, my mother was Buddhist. Of course,
my mother and father were Buddhist. I do
have a shrine in the back that I keep.

Yes.

I put my parent’s pictures in there. I
probably would have been Buddhist, if I had
grown up in a community that was Buddhist,
but we were the only Japanese people, and so
the people would come and take us to church
and then I became a Christian. I still go to
Christian church.

When I die, I don’t want all those things
that I saved to end up in a garage sale. They

call them Kai-myo (sacred papers). So I got
in contact with a Buddhist priest that I had
known. I talked it over with my older relatives,
and so I wrote to Japan and I asked them if I
could send the Kai-myo, all those things, to
the church, the Buddhist Temple in Japan,
as a permanent place. They said yes. They
talked to the Buddhist priest who said yes. But
everything requires money. They don’t say you
pay for it; it’s sort like an offering or something
like a donation. So I asked my relatives in Japan
how much do they think I should give to the
church? They told me, and the money was a
little higher than it is now, but they told me it
amounted to four thousand dollars.

Wow!

But I sent that four thousand dollars,
and I sent all of the sacred papers. I made a
duplicate, and I still keep the duplicate here,
but I sent the original things to Japan. So
I went into the Japanese Temple where my
relatives go. And then I put a note in the
Hotoki-san (portable shrine) saying that when
I die, that this goes to a Buddhist church,
and they asked that that Hotoki-san goes to a
Buddhist family. It’s too sacred to end up in a
garage sale someplace, and I don’t want those
things, like the Kai-myo, to be just thrown out,
because Hotoki-san doesn’t mean anything to
them. So I did that a couple of years ago, and
I feel better for it.

I see. So what are they going to do with the
duplicates?

Well, the duplicates can go to our church
here, or the Buddhist church in California
some place.

But you didn’t think about giving the originals
to the church in California?

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

No, I wanted the originals to go to Japan.
I’m paying four thousand dollars; I think the
originals should go. [laughter]

I see. Did your parents expect you to do all that,
or just because you want to?

No, I wanted to. No, my parents never said
anything like that. They probably didn’t even
think about anything like that, but I wanted to
do that. None of my relatives even suggested
it; I just thought that it would be right. Those
are the things that I think are instilled in me
from my mother.

Were there a lot of conflicts between being a
Japanese, rejecting the Japanese heritage, and
Christianity?

No, no. My mother used to go to Christian
church with me. She would sit and pray in her
own way, but she would sit, especially during
the war, because my brother was overseas.
The values of this country have deteriorated
so. Like, for example, I resent the fact that
my brother went to the service, went into the
army, and endured all the hardships, and he
went through hard fighting in Europe, and
yet we have a president now that didn’t even
go into the service, and used his influence to
get out of it, and he can still be commander
in chief. I resent that. I think that’s terrible,
because out of respect for all of the Japanese
people that went and fought and died for
this country, somebody like that can become
president. My husband feels the same way. He
was in the service in Korea. But, of course, you
know Clinton won. The values are terrible. The
morality is terrible these days, too.

I had my friend make this flower
arrangement. I’m going to put it in front of the
Hotoki-san. My aunt, who is in her nineties,
every time she comes, because she’s Buddhist,

she always brings me some flowers to put in
front of the Hotoki-san. And I’m not very good
at this arrangement, so I used to just put them
there. But I had this arrangement made to put
in front of the Buddhist shrine. Not many
people are Buddhists around here, are they?

I think none of them say they are Buddhist, and
they didn’t have a shrine.

Christian relationship? I know I’ve never
heard of anybody going to church. But I
contribute to church. Every month I make a
pledge.

Do you have children?

No, no. My husband has a son. Between
the two of us we don’t have children.

So that means you are not going to expect
anybody to keep you, put you in that kind of
assisted living home?

No, that’s why I made all these
arrangements, so that the Kai-myo and things
would go to Japan, the Buddhist shrine would
go to a Buddhist church in California, and all
those things, because I am not Buddhist, and
they don’t know anything about those things.
That’s why I say I don’t want any of them in a
garage sale.

What about your husband? Your husband
understands Japanese culture?

More or less; not deeply, but he has very
high morals, and he’s a very quiet, good
person. He’s a Mason, and in Japan they have
Masons.

I don’t really understand the meaning of a
Mason.

Ida Fukui Weiss

It’s all over the world, but they believe in
God.

I want to go back to that question of your social
life. Since your mother was Japanese, and she
could not communicate very well in English,
except for communicating with Japanese people
near Carson City, what kind of a social life did
she have?

Not very much, I don’t think.

She stayed home?

All day they worked hard, so afterwards
she didn’t have much time for socializing, but
they worked hard. I remember my
mother talking about how they’d get up at four
o’clock in the morning and work hard. Japanese
people, most of them, are used to working hard.

I have two nieces—my cousin just died in
July—his children. They’re really my cousins.
He was a Nisei. He had them working in the
cleaners during the summer time. They were
hard workers, so when they went to school
at University of Nevada, Reno, they always
studied hard. You probably do, too. But this
one girl, I think she took accounting, but
one of the subjects she took was logistics. I
understand that’s hard, but it looks good on
a resume. So she went to one of these job
fairs, and she got hired right away with just
one interview. Now she has a very good job,
and she does very well, because she went to
South Carolina, and the cost of living is not
like Reno, so she’s doing very well. But they
were hard workers.

So your father passed away, what year?

Oh, yes. In 1956, so it’s a long time ago.
Because of disease, or what?

He had a ruptured appendix, and it
became peritonitis. You know, once disease
spreads after a ruptured appendix . . . well,
then that’s how he died. My mother was old;
she died of congenital heart disease; old age,
really.

Yes, ninety-three. So after your father had
passed away, your mother . . . ?

The two of us lived. My brother was
married and gone, so it was just the two of us.

Did she make something like, you know,
traditionally Japanese arts or crafts?

No. But she was a good cook, Japanese
food. I miss Japanese food; do you?

Well, I cook some.

Do you?

Yes.

So I have to go to a Japanese restaurant
once in a while with my friends.

But you know how to cook Japanese food?

No.

You did not learn from your mother?

No, but I wished I had, because my mother
used to make good Japanese dishes. And the
New Year’s, oh, she used to cook all kinds of
delicious Japanese dishes. I miss Japanese New
Year’s. Some of my American friends would
come, and they got so they cultivated a taste.
When I was working at the hospital I got to
be good friends with a doctor. I used to talk
about sashimi (raw tuna fish), and he said,

100

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

“Don’t eat sashimi. You get worms and this
and that, heavens!”

But when they came over here for New
Year’s, and my mother would have sashimi,
he acquired a taste for it. He used to go to the
fish market at Mary Date’s Fish Market, and
he used to sit in the back room and eat the
sashimi, [laughter] I said, “I thought you said
it was not good for you.”

“Well, I don’t know, but isn’t it good?”

Yes, but I can’t get any fresh meat here. I don’t
eat sashimi.

When I go to a restaurant I order it. If
you’re going to get sick, you’re going to get
sick, so I eat it!

I have a couple of more questions. Are there
any of your relatives here or in California who
have jobs relating to the railroad?

No.

None of them?

No.

I just heard a lot of people who are Japanese in
Nevada came here to get jobs in the railroad
company.

There was a family here, but I don’t know.
Did you hear about the Nishiguchis? He was
in the railroad, but I don’t know whether
anybody’s here or not. Oh, I guess some of
them are, but you can ask about that. They are
all married to Caucasians now, I think. But an
interesting thing, a lot of Asians worked in the
railroad and mines. So up at Virginia City, if
you read up on Virginia City, there were a
lot of Asians up there, and that cemetery is
famous, but do you know, there’s no Asian

cemetery, Chinese cemetery? It was plowed
under.

Oh, really?

Yes. A friend of mine—we used to go
up there and go through the cemetery, and
then there were some historians from the
Nevada Historical Society, and I mentioned
it. Somebody wrote a book or something
about it, and I called that person, and they
said, “No Asian cemetery.” You know, they
used to have to bury them separate, because
of the discrimination. They said that there
was vandalism there, and so they plowed it
under. Now, if plowing it under—if that’s not
vandalism, I don’t know what is.

I can’t see any Asian graveyards there?

Some up there. There’s a few in Carson.

I heard a Japanese came to Reno, and he was
the first person that came to this country in
1867. He is buried in the Mountain View
Cemetery. I think people who grew up in Reno
or came to live in Reno before World War

II and went through their difficulty in Reno
had a more easy life than I heard from you in
Carson City.

Oh, I think everybody had the same.
That’s why we all stuck together. Now, we don’t
need each other, but that’s the way people are,
unless you’re true friends.

So, do you sometimes go to JACL meetings?

No, I don’t go to JACL anymore, even
though it started in our house. I don’t go any
more, because they’re all different people;
they’re younger people, but we worked hard to
get this law passed. Remember when they got

Ida Fukui Weiss

101

the twenty thousand, because of evacuations?
Well, it didn’t concern me. I didn’t go to an
evacuation camp. I was born and raised here.
So I didn’t go very much, and then I lost
interest, being married to a Caucasian and
all that. I don’t go.

So you don’t keep any Japanese customs here
in this house?

I don’t think so. I can’t think of anything.
I have some Japanese artifacts, like I have
dolls and my mother’s dishes, and things
like that, but aside from that, we don’t. I’ve
forgotten so many things; it’s too bad. I know
a Japanese custom: when you go someplace,
you take a present. I’ve forgotten all about
that, [laughter] I don’t do anything. I don’t
do that any more.

I think that’s OK in this country.

Well, some of the old people still do, like
my aunt; she brings flowers for the shrine, but
I forget those things, and I am ashamed of
myself, because some of them still do, bring
things. When I go to see them, I think, “Oh,
I should have taken something.”

Your parents were not carpenters, so they did
not make any special house for you?

No. My parents had a building where they
had the laundry, and the laundry was on this
side, and we lived in the other half.

When I come into my room, I still take my shoes
off right away.

Oh, do you?

Yes. I am comfortable to do it. Why, did your
parents leave theirs on?

Did we do that? No. Did your roommates
laugh?

Well, yes. They just wonder why I am doing it.
[laughter] I am so used to just taking my shoes
off and putting my feet out to relax.

No, we don’t do that. My brother and his
wife are very neat and clean and tidy, and
all that stuff. He vacuums all the time. My
husband and I are just the opposite. We get
along great.

Did your father sing songs?

Yes, yes.

Yes, I heard about it. I was wondering, did
they keep the shigen (Japanese-style singing)
on paper?

No, I don’t think so.

Or did they write it down?

I don’t know.

Original Index:
For Reference Only

In order to standardize the design of all UNOHP transcripts for the online database, they have
been reformatted, a process that was completed in early 2012. This document may therefore differ
in appearance and pagination from earlier printed versions. Rather than compile entirely new
indexes for each volume, the UNOHP has made each transcript fully searchable electronically. If
a previous version of this volume existed, its original index has been appended to this document
for reference only. A link to the entire catalog can be found online at http://oralhistory.unr.edu/.

104

Japanese-Americans: Generations in Nevada

Aoyama, Fred, 1-28, 78, 120-
121, 153

Date, Ken, 31-32

Date, Mary, 29-47

Dog House (Reno, Nevada), 17

Baba, David, 28
Baker, Bud, 7-8
Brynner, Yul, 27

Firestone Tire Store (Reno,
Nevada), 20-22

Original Index: For Reference Only

105

Harrah, William F., 19
Harrah’s Club, 16, 19
Hattori, Eugene, 78, 94
Hattori, Henry, 28, 73-97
Hattori, James, 78, 94-95

Oshima, Eunice, 137-140, 142-
144

Oshima, George, 78, 133-148

Rand, Sally, 13

Nishiguchi, Elizabeth “Betty,”
102-103,106,108, 127-128
Nishiguchi, Roy, 99-132
Nixon, Richard M., 7-8

Warren, Earl, 11
Weiss, Ida Fukui, 149-164
World War II, 56, 58-60

Okowa, Henry, 15
Olympic Games (Winter,
1960), 7-8

Yamagashi, Mr., 11-15

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